Tucked inside the garden at Hospice Austin’s Christopher House, a blue telephone sits with a plaque reading: To say hello/ To say goodbye/ To say I miss you/ To say I love you. The “wind phone” doesn’t take calls, in the traditional sense, but it offers an outlet for grieving loved ones to say what they wish they could to someone they’ve lost. While her mom catches up with nurses inside, a little girl settles here among the flowers and trees, talking through the blue plastic to her dad, a former patient at Christopher House.
Hospice care involves providing pain management and support for patients with terminal illnesses. At Hospice Austin, their donation-supported care comes largely from about 350 trained volunteers who’ve also experienced great loss. The majority of the organization’s roughly 330 patients a day stay at home, but a select few live at Christopher House for extra aid. The building originally was a facility for HIV/AIDS patients, and a wall of stone hands at the front of Christopher House reminds guests now of this longstanding history of looking after those in need.
While having a historic home like this makes them unique, Hospice Austin’s PR and media manager Kiki Jones emphasizes that the services they provide patients’ families makes them even more special. Rather than exclusively focusing on patient care, Hospice Austin offers families and friends impacted by significant loss extensive grief support, including support groups, counseling, a free children’s grief summer camp, and an open door to visit the wind phone, memorial bricks, or staff at Christopher House.
“Grief affects so many people that our bereavement services are open to anybody who’s facing a loss,” says Jones. “That is really big in our mission, is taking care of you and your family.”
At Hospice Austin, donations directly fund that mission: to ease patients’ physical, emotional, and spiritual pain, however that may play out. For example, they’ve hosted one patient’s Ph.D. graduation ceremony, made sure another patient got her desired milkshake for breakfast every day, and threw a party for another with live Cuban music.
“I’ve talked to many families after their loved one has passed, and the support they receive and the memories they now have from their loved one’s death are infinitely better than dying in a hospital,” Jones said.
The families of patients often come back after their family member’s passing. A woman whose sister was a patient puts together flower arrangements every week. A fire station whose former co-worker stayed at Christopher House occasionally visits with food. And not a day goes by that volunteers aren’t receiving thank you notes, says Phillip Sadler, Christopher House’s coordinator of volunteers.
“We love to sit with family members that just need somebody to hold their hand, listen, [or] talk to process. It’s a beautiful thing,” says Sadler. “It’s hard, but people don’t understand that the magic of volunteering in this kind of environment is the help you give.”
This article appears in November 28 • 2025.