ABSTRACT
About six months after hurricane Floyd, in March 2000, the author was assigned a hospice family who were still struggling with the aftermath. The author pulled his green 1994 Ford Ranger into the family home's driveway and parked around the back of their white house. The patient's wife answered the knock on the door and said to the author "I knew you were okay when I saw you pull up in a Ford truck." The author had never really thought of his truck as a welcome sight, but he accepted her comment. The patient spent most of his time in bed. When he was in his chair, he could not talk for very long, because he would lose his breath. After many visits, the patient died in his bed one night, he succumbed to pneumonia and stopped breathing. The wife said that she was very saddened by her loss, but she would learn to deal with it.
