I have been volunteering at The Community Hospice of Albany and of Rensselaer since September 2016. I started the volunteer training thinking about my career goal to become a grief counselor. Maybe I would sit and hold the hand of the dying, or hug crying family members? I was not clear at all about what hospice volunteers did, to say nothing of what hospice did, but since then I have learned a lot through the training and trying on different roles.

There are many ways to be active as a hospice volunteer, and not only in the ways one might first expect. I have surprised myself by thriving in the role of office worker. My younger self hated office work, stuck in a cubicle, with low performance expectations, high personal and systemic irritations, and, overall, boredom. I left corporate office work to academia for a few decades, and now I’ve circled back, but to a different kind of office work — and with a different me. The new humbled me loves the routine of showing up, a bit of regular socialization, and succeeding as a very small but important part of a very big and important system. Loving the organization I work for matters the most, of course.

Last year I took on the routine need for putting together new notebooks, “A Guidebook for Patients, Family and Caregivers.” Typically I show up for a few hours once a week to the office in Albany and find my rolling cart prepared with fresh boxes of dozens of empty binders and multiple various sets of printed documents. I feel lucky if I can find an empty conference room, and super-lucky when the staff has reserved one for me.

I set up factory-style assembly and go to work. I often plug in my earbuds and listen to podcasts or music while I’m working. I take up a whole room (which majority of on-the-road staff often need for meetings and catching up on email and phone calls and paperwork), but it goes quickly, and the staff members often notice my presence and the work I’m doing and how I’m doing it. Many stop in and say “hello,” catch up with me, or just to say “thank you.” One day a chaplain popped in and watched what I was doing for a few minutes, then looking at me, and said, “Ah! You’re the book lady!” I love that even people who didn’t know me in my former life as an English professor that the moniker still fits.