Northpinellas: Hospice unit helps prepare Navy veteran

If it his will, she could leave her four children, 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren behind. Gone would be her wisp of gray hair and her words of wisdom. Her family would be left with the memories of a matriarch, a pioneer from days gone by, and a little piece of Florida history would cease to exist.

Unlike many, Speer, a World War II Navy veteran, is ready to face death.

She has been facing it, off and on, for nearly 14 years. She and her family have now turned to a team of experts to help them say goodbye.

Speer, 78, has survived ovarian cancer, beat it into remission. But her remaining kidney, damaged by bouts with chemotherapy, is failing. Her illness sometimes leaves her in a state of confusion. Hours after granting an interview, she didn't remember doing so.

A week ago,she sat in a reclining chair at the VA Medical Center at Bay Pines, clutching a photo of the barn where she built her childhood memories. She wore blue slippers,and an afghan hid her legs.

As hospice doctors and nurses looked on, her voice was childlike.

She took them back to Groveland,named for the acres of orange groves, where she was born on April 12, 1922, to a sawmill worker and homemaker.

"I have the fondest memories of this place," she said, referring to the photo of the barn. "It's a wonder that it's still there."

Her medical odyssey has led her to the hospice unit, Ward 4B, where doctors focus on her spiritual being. Here she will "die healed."

Her caretakers hardly seem like the doctors, nurses, social workers and chaplains most people are accustomed to. They work in tandem and wheel around chairs and sit at eye level with their patients.

There is little talk of a prognosis. Every patient who comes to the hospice unit has, at most, six months to live. About half die in the first week. Speer has been there for more than three weeks.

Dying healed is more about conversation than medicine. So her doctors gave her a little prod to talk about why she joined the Navy.

"Well, the war came along and my brother was called and I wanted to be with him," she allowed.

There is more to this story, parts she was not telling. Her brother, James A. Carter Jr., was two years older, a protector of sorts. He was the one who would walk with her to and from school at dawn and dusk. She emulated him. He played football at Groveland High, and she, all 5 feet 4 inches of her, signed up for the girls basketball team. The team went on to win the state championship in 1938 and 1939.

So, naturally, when he went to serve his country, she wanted to come along. At the time, she had no idea she was among the first women from Florida to enlist as Navy WAVES. Today, she shoos away the notion.

"My thinking is, my country needed all of us."

Speer is about as modest as they come. When a stranger introduced herself, tears filled her eyes, and she insisted she didn't have a story to tell.

"I really don't understand," she said, "why I should have all of this attention."

It's just part of the program, the healing.

"We need to learn what you're teaching," said Deborah Grassman, a hospice clinical coordinator and nurse practitioner for the program since its inception five years ago. "You speak truth."

"Come see me," Speer quipped.

Doctors here put their patients on a pedestal. They cook bacon and eggs for them every Wednesday, sing hymns and pray with them once a week.

"It's a way of respecting her as a person and the contribution she has made," said Dr. John Hull, who specializes in geriatrics and hospice care. "It's a process we all go through at the end of our lives."

Patients and their families are encouraged to work through a five-step program. They start by forgiving each other for past wrongs, proclaim their love for each other, thank each other, and, finally, they say goodbye.

This approach, as unconventional as it may seem, works.

Bea Steele, Speer's youngest daughter, often stops by to see her mother and reminisce with her. "This place has been a miracle for my mom and my family," she said. "They have given my mom so much love and attention."

It helps the relatives, too.

Speer's son, Jack Speer, has written a song about his mother and penned letters to her.

He reached back in time and wrote about when his mother was a "dit-dot-ditter," a Morse code transcriber. After six weeks of training in Madison, Wis., he wrote, his mother reported for work in Corpus Christi, Texas. Just two weeks later, she met the Navy pilot who would soon become her husband, Lt. Cmdr. John H. Speer III.

"She is a champion in every sense of the word and an icon of courage," Jack Speer said.

Both siblings say talking with their mother makes it easier to say goodbye.

Jack Speer was nervous about his mother's seeking hospice care. He wanted to save her; doctors wanted to wrap up loose ends. Jack, who doesn't consider himself very religious or spiritual, has been helped by the approach.

"That did me good to sit there and recall her history, so to speak, and at the same time to let her know how much she means to me," he said.

The patient, meanwhile, has accepted death. When Jack Speer wept at the edge of his mother's bed, she told him to stop.

"Jack, that's not necessary," she said. "I'm going to a better place."

It is an indication she has already done much of the work she was sent to the hospice unit to do. Whileshe sat in her room last week, her eyes took on a dreamy stare. She tilted her head and paused for a moment.

"I was just thinking about this world," she said. "This world is not my home. I'm just passing through."

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