Dying Age 55 Woman Has No Family Near, So EMTs & Hospice Nurse Help Fulfill Her Final Wish
Have you ever considered the things that make life worth living? For some of us, they’ll be grand things like proclaiming great truths or seeking change or making things great again.
Those are certainly worthy goals. Yet many find meaning in more ordinary experiences.
The perfect cup of coffee. Playfully wrestling with your kids. Giving your spouse a lingering kiss. Some find these things to be the best that life has to offer.
For 55-year-old Laura Mullins, she wanted to enjoy one thing: a lighthouse. The Ohio native had always loved the light-adorned spires.
In fact, Mullins had kept tiny replica lighthouses all around her room, as well as photos of them. But she’d never seen one in real life — and she didn’t have much life left.
See, the fifty-something woman no longer lived in Ohio. She now resided in Massachusetts and was under the care of Kindred Hospice.
“My dream has come true”: EMTs help woman get her dying wish https://t.co/bw5zyDq4Qf pic.twitter.com/Cfr9pnZIbU
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 16, 2018
Mullins knew full well that she was dying. So WHDH reported that she asked her nurse Beverly Bellegarde for one thing: Would an ambulance take her to a lighthouse?
It wasn’t the kind of request the medical professional often got. But Bellegarde decided that, as much as it was in her power, she’d try to give the dying woman her heart’s desire.
According to CBS News, the nurse contacted Brewster Ambulance Service and explained the situation to them. Not only were the EMTs willing to accommodate Bellegarde, they were excited — and did it free of charge.
“These EMTs didn’t have to do this,” Johnathon Bobbit-Miller of Brewster Ambulance Service said. “They felt compelled to make this wish come true.”
And they did. They took Mullins, her chaplain and Bellegarde to Massachusetts’ Scituate Lighthouse.
Bobbit-Miller recounted how the day of the trip was a “cloudy, windy day all morning. The rain actually stopped as soon as we took her out of the ambulance. …
“She asked if she could see both the lighthouse and the harbor. She said that she could hear the waves.
“Her face was glowing. She sat up and said, ‘My dream has come true.’”
The chaplain blessed Mullins as she looked at the beautiful structure she had so long adored and the gray, wind-tossed waves of the harbor. The experienced seemed to do more than simply fulfill her.
“She seemed at such peace,” Bobbit-Miller noted. “She said, ‘I’m ready to go now.’”
On the way back to Mullins’ hospice care facility, the EMTs stopped at McDonald’s so she could also enjoy her favorite sandwich.
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