From Jay Fox, Megan's Father:

Megan talked about being a teacher and she really was.  From seeing so many of her peers and friends die in the NIH program, she knew much more about dying than most adults.

Like most adults, I refused to relinquish control, to "fail" by facing the reality of her dying, for as long as I could.  Finally the time had come.  I called Hospice.

In all the months of care, no one from Hospice ever treated Megan like she was dying.  I came to understand her death as described in a poem about a great sailing ship that disappears over the horizon:
  

Just as someone on this shore calls, "There, she is gone!",there are other eyes watching and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:  "Here she comes!" and that is dying.

"I don't know how you can do this," people say about my volunteering with Hospice.  I do it as I did with Megan, seeing her as someone who needed another friend in her life at a very difficult time.  I see the living part of each patient and try very hard to listen, to discover more of what they need to have done.  It was a joy to discover Megan's "11-year-old-ness," the living part of her that had grown from little girl to pre-teen during her illness.  I looked for ways we could have fun together and found that she liked to have me sit on the end of her bed while she made doll cloths or we read books together.

I learned to know Megan as a wonderful, talented 11-year-old child who happened to have AIDS, who happened to be dying, and who happened to be living.  I got so much pleasure out of being part of her life.

Having a child as a Hospice patient is a challenge. Their world is so different, their expectations and their outlook, even though Megan was very mature.  She wanted honesty, for us to be forthright and tell her how it was.

She knew everything about her care and often coached me --"flush that IV line with this one, Kathy." (In Hospice you have a say-so in your care, so I listened.)  We would do the nursing items in the first part of each visit and then do something together, like braid her hair.

With our help, her family was able to concentrate on Megan herself and not on what she needed as nursing care. They could spend the precious time left with her. She didn't ask for much out of her life, except being loved and cared for.

She taught me that every person gives a different kind of love.  I was still learning until the day she died.

by Nancy Fletcher, (Editorial in September 1996 issue of the Hospice Newsletter, of the Talbot Hospice Foundation.