Testimonials & Hospice Stories

Hospice Stories

Our Promise to Joan

Rabbi Avie helped Maurie Cascade reconnect with God and inspired Joan to a new calling.

Rabbi Avie Shapiro was standing in the Jewish Hospice & Chaplaincy Network's offices when Joan Cascade called looking for a rabbi to help her ailing husband, Maurie. He was Jewish; Joan is not.

Maurie needs a rabbi

Joan explained to Office Manager Sue Lazar that Maurie — in his mid-80s — had cancer and a heart condition. He asked her to find a rabbi so he could reconnect with God before he died. Since Maurie was unaffiliated, and Joan unfamiliar with the Jewish community, she could not find a rabbi to come see him.

Sue put the phone down. "What are you doing right now?" she asked Rabbi Shapiro, "They are desperate."

"I am on my way to their place," the JHCN staff chaplain replied.

As soon as he arrived, Rabbi Shapiro bonded with the loving couple. They decided to meet every Tuesday.

Religion according to Maurie

"I was really drawn to Maurie," Rabbi Shapiro said. "He just wanted a rabbi to put him at ease. And I had such respect for Joan. She wanted to learn more about our traditions and was grateful we could help during their time of need."

During their earliest visits, Maurie and Joan leaned upon each other's shoulders while seated on the couch. Rabbi Shapiro reclined in a chair across the room, his feet propped up on an ottoman. Sometimes their meetings lasted an hour; other times longer.

Maurie told Rabbi Shapiro he considered religion private and that until now he rarely discussed his beliefs with anyone. While he carried a prayer book in his uniform during WWII, he never joined a congregation after his service ended. He married, focused on work and raised a family with his first wife. After she died, he fell in love with Joan and proposed to her on his 80th birthday.

Physical decline, spiritual growth

Rabbi Shapiro discussed Judaism in terms relevant to them — the meaning of life and death, God, suffering, prayer and Jewish traditions. Every meeting ended with the rabbi davening with Maurie and reciting the Shema.

Rabbi Shapiro recited the healing prayer for the sick after leaving the Cascade home.

Through these weekly visits, Maurie's spiritual health improved even while his physical health declined. Maurie died in September 2005. He was 89.

Becoming a volunteer: "It was bashert."

Since Maurie's death, Joan has welcomed Rabbi Shapiro and his wife, Shelly, into her own extended family and has become one of JHCN's most dedicated volunteers. She wants to make life better for other families experiencing the impending death of a loved one, and believes no one should be alone at the end of life.

"Rabbi Shapiro and the Jewish Hospice & Chaplaincy Network took care of my husband while he was dying, and I now devote my volunteer life to their work," Joan said. "It is the right thing to do, and thank God I am able to do it. It is just bashert Rabbi Shapiro walked into our home."

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