【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 ause of them. But we ask too much of our hospitals. They are places for acute trauma and treatable illness. They are no place to live and die。 thatamp。39。s not what they were designed for.
　　Now mind you I am not giving up on the notion that our institutions can bee more humane. Beauty can be found anywhere. I spent a few months in a burn unit at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, New Jersey, where I got really great care at every turn, including good palliative care for my pain. And one night, it began to snow outside. I remember my nurses plaining about driving through it. And there was no window in my room, but it was great to just imagine it ing down all sticky. Next day, one of my nurses smuggled in a snowball for me. She brought it in to the unit. I cannot tell you the rapture I felt holding that in my hand, and the coldness dripping onto my burning skin。 the miracle of it all, the fascination as I watched it melt and turn into water. In that moment, just being any part of this planet in this universe mattered more to me than whether I lived or died. That little snowball packed all the inspiration I needed to both try to live and be OK if I did not. In a hospital, thatamp。39。s a stolen moment.
　　In my work over the years, Iamp。39。ve known many people who were ready to go, ready to die. Not because they had found some final peace or transcendence, but because they were so repulsed by what their lives had bee in a word, cut off, or ugly. There are already record numbers of us living with chronic and terminal illness, and into ever older age. And we are nowhere near ready or prepared for this silver tsunami. We need an infrastructure dynamic enough to handle these seismic shifts in our population. Now is the time to create something new, something vital. I know we can because we have to. The alternative is just unacceptable. And the key ingredients are known: policy, education and training, systems, bricks and mortar. We have tons of input for designers of all stripes to work with.
　　We know, for example, from research whatamp。39。s most important to people who are closer to death: fort。 feeling unburdened and unburdening to those they love。 existential peace。 and a sense of wonderment and spirituality.
　　Over Zen Hospiceamp。39。s nearly 30 years, weamp。39。ve learned much more from our residents in subtle detail. Little things arenamp。39。t so little. Take Janette. She finds it harder to breathe one day to the next due to ALS. Well, guess what? She wants to start smoking again and French cigarettes, if you please. Not out of some selfdestructive bent, but to feel her lungs filled while she has them. Priorities change. Or Kate she just wants to know her dog Austin is lying at the foot of her bed, his cold muzzle against her dry skin, instead of more chemotherapy coursing through her veins sheamp。39。s done that. Sensuous, aesthetic gratification, where in a moment, in an instant, we are rewarded for just being. So much of it es down to loving our time by way of the senses, by way of the body the very thing doing the living and the dying.
　　Probably the most poignant room in the Zen Hospice guest house is our kitchen, which is a little strange when you realize that so many of our residents can eat very little, if anything at all. But we realize we are providing sustenance on several levels: smell, a symbolic plane. Seriously, with all the heavyduty stuff happening under our roof, one of the most tried and true interventions we know of, is to bake cookies. As long as we have our senses even just one we have at least the possibili