Published: November 04, 2009 08:14 am      

Chisholm Trail Hospice to hold memorial service

DUNCAN — Duncan Regional Hospital’s Chisholm Trail Hospice will be holding a memorial service for anyone who may be grieving the loss of a loved one Thursday.

Glenn McGee has been a chaplain with the hospice in Duncan for five years, and said the memorial service is held every year and is an event for people to come to if they have lost someone.

“Most of the patients we deal with are 80 or 90 years old, so it’s usually a fairly comforting and easy transition,” McGee said. “But then some of our patients range in the 50s and 60s, even children at times, and it’s sometimes very hard to let them go.”

As well as being a service for the community, the memorial service serves as a reminder for the hospice group as well.

“As hospice people, we see a lot of patients,” McGee said. “We see people pass every week, and you can become kind of numb to those types of things. We want to maintain our level of compassion.

“We’ll have a prayer before the service and it’s kind of refreshing for us.”

The service will be at 7 p.m. in the First Presbyterian Church in Duncan and McGee said that he is very grateful that the church lets them have the service there every year.

“Its a beautiful chapel, and it’s not real huge,” McGee said. “It doesn’t swallow you up, because we only have 20 to 30 people that come to this every year.”

McGee said that they used to have the service to honor every hospice patient that has passed in the previous year, but a lot of times, the families wouldn’t come. When they would read the names of the patients, the hospice members would end up lighting the candles for them if the family wasn’t present.

“Different people grieve differently,” McGee said. “Some people aren’t necessarily ready for this or just simply don’t need it.”

For any further information on the service, contact Eryn C. Bull or Glenn McGee at 580-251-8764.