Hospice cards: Greeting Card Universe Steps Up

I wanted to post an update in the continuing saga of my request for Hallmark to create hospice cards.   At this point the petition has over 4,000 signatureson Change.org.  While Hallmark has yet to create a card to fill this gap, Greeting Card Universe has created 24 hospice cards for friends and family of the hospice patient to use.  I was overjoyed to hear this!  This is another step closer to getting such cards in stores.  You order Greeting Card Universe Cards online, but you can pick them up in your local Target store.  Isn’t that wonderful?  Mindy Rosso-Gaemi, community manager at Greeting Card Universe heard our original plea and decided to do something about it.  She created the hospice category and several fields of card types.  She then asked her artists to use their talent and life experience to create some cards.  These lovely cards are the result.

I loved the heart-felt truth and honesty of this card:

http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/occasions/goodbyefarewell/hospiceendoflifefinalgoodbye/religious/christian-saying-goodbye-end-of-1072816

And though it may have not been the intent of the author, this one with “You Are Not Alone” made me chuckle and would warm the heart of any Doctor Who fan.  So my friends Michael, Rebecca and Will if you ever enter hospice I am totally sending you this card!

Thank you Mindy and all the artists at Greeting Card Universe for making the end of life a little brighter.

Full press release below:

Greeting Card Universe Offers Greeting Cards for Final “Good-Bye” to Hospice Patients & “Thanks” to Hospice Nurses

San Francisco, CA – (May  1, 2013) – In celebration and support of National Nurses Day on May 6th, Greeting Card Universe, the world’s largest greeting card store, announces its new collection of hard to find and uncommon cards for patients in Hospice Care – affording loved ones the words and sentiments to say a final “good-bye”.

“Together with regular nursing duties, hospice nurses provide palliative care to terminally ill patients,” says Mindy Rosso-Gaemi, Community Manager at Greeting Card Universe. “A hospice nurse not only helps a dying patient going through a distressing  and often times frightening period, but shows the same level of caring and compassion in comforting the patient’s family and giving emotional and spiritual support when it’s needed most.  A special ‘thank you’ card for a nurse or caregiver is a wonderful way to express gratitude to these special individuals”.  Greeting Card Universe has a popular collection of over 1,000 Nurses Day cards. 

Hospice care was first established in the 1970s. At the time, cancer patients made up the greatest number of recipients. Today, thanks to advances in medicine, less than 50 percent of hospice admissions are due to cancer. An estimated 1.65 million patients receive hospice care in the United States each year.

 “Hospice patients need to hear from family and friends,” says Rosso-Gaemi. “They need to know they’re loved and won’t be forgotten, and that it’s okay to let go.  For most people coping with a dying loved one is too difficult. They fear of saying the wrong thing and are at a loss for words so say nothing at all at a time when any words would mean so much.  Not taking the opportunity to connect is a regret they’ll likely carry for the rest of their lives.”

Greeting Card Universe offers sympathetically designed Hospice Good-bye / End of Life cards created especially to give to hospice patients, providing a starting place for a loving, therapeutic conversation or a final good-bye.  The new collection of cards was inspired by the plea of Regina Holliday, artist, widow and healthcare advocate, who publically petitioned Hallmark to create a collection of Hospice End of Life greeting cards. 

 “Where Hallmark stumbled, Greeting Card Universe has risen to the occasion offering a new collection of cards to serve this niche market,“ shares Rosso-Gaemi.   “It’s not always about what’s politically correct or the size of the market, but instead if there’s a real need for expression.  Once shoppers discover the variety of cards we offer, they’ll never shop anywhere else. ”

Greeting Card Universe put the request for hospice cards out to their community of 5,900 artists.  Within two weeks the new collection emerged with over two dozen cards and more to come.  Many of these artists drew upon emotions and experiences of hospice care and their own lost loved ones.  The creations carry their tender words of thanks, good-bye and prayer for others to express when the words don’t come easily.

Ordering online from Greeting Card Universe’s collection is easy and convenient.  An added convenience for last minute shoppers, cards can be ordered online and picked up— usually within one hour—from most Target stores across the country. 

Greeting Card Universe’s traditional and niche offerings of over 589,000 cards gives nod to the importance of choice and personalization in today’s marketplace and stays true to its tagline “any card imaginable.” 

Explore more uncommon holidays and occasions on the Greeting Card Universe blog.   Mindy Rosso-Gaemi is available for guest blogs, radio and TV interviews on this topic and other uncommon occasions and holidays.

About Greeting Card Universe
Greeting Card Universe (www.greetingcarduniverse.com) is a division of BigDates Solutions, a private company that provides consumers with unique, personalized services for any holiday or occasion. Greeting Card Universe is the world's largest paper greeting card store, offering an unlimited selection of custom greeting cards, birthday greeting cards, photo cards, invitations, and note cards. BigDates Solutions is the leading provider of Online Reminder Service Solutions, powering gift-reminder services, including 1800Flowers.com and FTD.com. The company is also the owner of Birthday Calendar, a Facebook application with over 42 million installs.

Contact:  Mindy Rosso-Gaemi Mindy.Rosso@bigdates.com                                                                                                            

Painting with my Zombie Finger and Thoughts of the Living Dead

Painting with my Zombie Finger
Originally uploaded by Regina Holliday

When I was painting in preparation for the gallery show in July, I was in pain. I had smashed my finger in a ladder, and it was swollen with the under-nail blackened with blood. As I painted, I thought of how much my finger resembled a zombie’s finger. Gradually painting, with each stroke of the brush a kind of agony, I remembered zombies used to be slow.

My husband Fred and I often talked about this phenomenon. We had grown up with films like Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Zombies would stumble and walk slowly, groaning as they came. Even an out-of-shape store clerk like Shaun, from Shaun of the Dead, could outrun a zombie. The terror aspect of zombies resided in their unstoppable nature. Zombies did not sleep, they did not stop, and they were everywhere. These are the type of zombies depicted in the 2006 book World War Z by Max Brooks. This book was a follow-up to the very popular Zombie Survival Guide of 2003.

The Zombie Survival Guide itself addressed a pop-culture meme of its time. In 1999 The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht was published. In the series of books that followed the authors explained how to save one’s self in extreme situations such as crocodile-infested waters or quicksand. In bars and at parties throughout America we took it a step further and asked all of our friends what their zombie survival plan was. In my age demographic, and I am 38 mind you, I have never met a person who did not have a zombie survival plan when asked to provide one.

Whilst this zeitgeist hobbled along, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland were creating 28 Days Later, released in 2002. In 28 Days Later, zombies ran. Purists will say the zombies in 28 Days Later are only humans infected with a virus, but it opened the floodgates. From the Dawn of the Dead remake of 2004 to Zombieland of 2009, zombies now would sprint toward their victims, tearing them to shreds in moments.

We are rapidly approaching the ten-year anniversary of fast zombies, and I think this change in zombie behavior in media is a reflection of the culture of our times. This is only the most recent example of our continuing denial of the image of death within our culture. We can deal with a frantic moving creature trying desperately to live, but many cannot accept the vision of the slow decent towards death.

When I visited Fred’s mother and father for the first time in the spring of 1993, I loved their charming home and was surprised to see a vestige of an older time within their walls. The Holliday house had a formal parlor. The parlor was furnished with imitation Chippendale pieces and matching lamps in a Victorian style. The space was usually dark and serene, a place apart from the busyness of the kitchen and other rooms. Once upon a time in America, everyone who had a decent-sized home would have had a formal parlor. This space had the best furnishings and art, and it was the room in which the recently deceased would be laid out for presentation before funeral. After the Civil War, families began giving over burying responsibilities to an outside business called a funeral parlor. With this change in the way Americans dealt with the transaction of death, formal parlors were replaced with living rooms, and Americans began to distance themselves from the realities of death.

Another vestige of this time that is rarely seen today is postmortem photography. I vividly remember going through a tin of old photographs as a child. I remember holding up a picture of a “sleeping” baby and asking my mother who the child was. Even at six years of age, I can remember feeling something was not quite right within the image. My mother paused and then told me it was the dead sibling of my father. The child had not lived long enough for a picture of it while living so they had a portrait taken after the child had died. I remember holding onto that picture for what seemed like an eternity. Although I placed it back in the tin 32 years ago, I can still see that baby in my mind.

Years later when Fred met my family, he held my hand as he patiently looked through years of family scrapbooks and photograph albums. After viewing a few albums, he was surprised and a little disgusted to see we took pictures of the dead. In our albums he saw my aunts and uncles and distant cousins all arrayed with their funeral finery. In 2001, one year before the fast zombie would make its debut in the world of film, I stood beside my husband as I took a picture of my dead father in his casket. Fred whispered in my ear, “Do not take a picture of me in my casket after I die.”  I respected Fred's wishes and when my Fred died, I did not take his picture. I did not have to. That image is seared within my mind.  But I also respect the wishes of all those families who take pictures of the love ones who have died.  Every now and then I see them in my Facebook and mourn with these families.

I recently read Atul Gawande’s piece in The New Yorker, Letting Go: What should medicine do when it can’t save your life. I was struck once again with the extreme discomfort most doctors have for discussions about end of life care with their patients. In our cancer journey, Fred and I often had to deal with the inability of Fred’s doctors to talk about the reality of palliative care and hospice as an option. In the emotional roller-coaster of potential treatment and curative care, we were left without a very good understanding of the benefits of a palliative course. After Fred was no longer eating or drinking and was in extreme pain, this direction was suggested, and Fred signed the appropriate paperwork. When we transported Fred to the hospice facility, both the EMT transport team and myself thought he might only have days left to live.

Due to the excellent care of the hospice team, Fred rallied and he lived for almost another month. The curative care without a palliative component that Fred had been receiving at the rehab facility was killing him faster. I was therefore not surprised when I saw an Aug 19, 2010, article from The New England Journal of Medicine stating, “Among patients with metastatic non–small-cell lung cancer, early palliative care led to significant improvements in both quality of life and mood. As compared with patients receiving standard care, patients receiving early palliative care had less aggressive care at the end of life but longer survival.”

So why do people resist the concept of hospice and palliative care when it has shown such ability provide a better quality of life, and in so doing, perhaps even extend life? Why do all of those friends of mine have a well thought-out zombie survival plan but have never considered filling out an advance directive? Why do we resist the reality of death as a part of life?

I think we were cheated out of the few accessible images of death within our culture when zombies became fast. Death is rarely fast in the world of cancer. It can take years or weeks or days to die. I have talked to enough spouses and caregivers at this point to know the experience of death is often the same. In Dr. Gawande’s article, Rich, the husband of Sara Monopoli, described her final hours. Rich recalled, “There was this awful groaning.” There is no prettifying death. “Whether it was with inhaling or exhaling, I don’t remember, but it was horrible, horrible, horrible to listen to.”

I know exactly how horrible those groaning breaths sound. I heard Fred make them for hours as he tried to breathe at the end of his life. But I heard them before in a pop culture world that tried to make sense of the senseless.