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Pinning ceremony: A passport to a Hospice veteran’s story

Times Observer photo by Stacey Gross Rich Gruber holds one of the pins to be given to a veteran enrolled with Hospice of Warren County.

“It’s a little bit, but it’s a lot,” said Rich Gruber of the veteran’s pin program at Hospice of Warren County.

Gruber is himself an Army veteran, and comes from a family that is deeply associated with various branches of the military. As such, Gruber said he’s able to provide a veteran connection to those veterans who enroll with Hospice.

“It’s a brotherhood,” said Gruber. Many veterans are humble about their service. Many don’t even talk about it, added Gruber. But if someone who also identifies with something so much a part of a veteran’s own identity can connect with them, Gruber said they tend to come around.

Gruber said that it was in 2012 that he decided he wanted to offer recognition to veterans enrolled with Hospice.

“So many veterans think that it’s been forgotten or that we don’t care,” said Gruber. “The service part of their life stays with them.

“At the end of life,” said Gruber, “it all comes back. This is a chance to say ‘we appreciate your service,’ to say ‘thank you.’

“The pinning is a passport to their individual story.”

It is also, according to Gruber, a time for veterans to take advantage of the catharsis that comes with talking about their service. Because it’s such a huge part of their identities, said Gruber, they need to talk about it.

“It’s a time for them to heal by getting that out,” he said.

Many of the veterans offered a pinning ceremony are humble. “They’ll say ‘I didn’t do anything,'” said Gruber. “But it’s important for them to know that they really did make a difference, whether they were in a war or not. It takes everyone. Sometimes they need a reminder. Everyone made their own contribution.”

Gruber said that the Department of Veteran’s Affairs in Warren helps by providing the pins.

Since January of 2012, Gruber has provided pinning services to around 160 vets. Whether a veteran is at home, in a nursing home, or in the hospital, pinning ceremonies provide an important moment for not just the veterans but their families as well.

“Sometimes you see the families start talking after a ceremony,” said Gruber. “They start telling their stories and the families are listening.”

And beyond offering a connection for vets and their families at the end of a veteran’s life, it shows family that their loved one was important, that they were appreciated for what they sacrificed. Coordinating the family can sometimes be difficult, said Gruber, but the catharsis is there for them as much as for the veteran himself, or herself. Gruber said he’s provided pinning ceremonies to around four or five women who were veterans as well as the many men.

The ceremony, said Gruber, is “very moving. It’s such a personal thing.”

Gruber and a Hospice of Warren County social worker will each take the veteran’s hand and recite a passage specifically prepared for HOWC pinning services. The pins, said Gruber, are then placed on the veteran’s shirt, hat or to the card with the passage on it and given to the veteran, depending on their conditions and ability to participate in the ceremony.

Like the Hospice legacy book program, the power of story is the backbone of the pinning ceremonies.

“The stories we’ve heard,” he said, and the stories that veterans have been given an opportunity to share, offer opportunities to bond and heal.

“It’s closure,” said Gruber.

One veteran told the story of how he befriended children in China and was able to gain peace and fulfillment at the end of his life by remembering and sharing that part of himself.

Many veterans, according to Gruber, wind up only coming out of their shells and feeling honored for their service after this process.

One patient, said Gruber, was in a nursing home and felt he had nothing in common with the nurses or the other patients around him. “He was always quiet, just sat their quiet,” said Gruber. “Finally after talking with him a few times I was able to get him to open up.” One veteran, he said, responded to Gruber telling him that he was in the Army, too, by saying, “that means we’re brothers aren’t we?”

Gruber struggles to talk about the many interactions he’s had with Hospice veterans without emotion.

Even on the Hospice of Warren County website, the agency makes a point to offer an entire page devoted to veterans to detail their ability to meet veterans with appropriate services and care.

“America’s veterans have done everything asked of them in their mission to serve our country,” the website says. “We believe it is never too late to give them a hero’s welcome home.” HOWC performs a military checklist upon enrollment that notes unique care needs of each veteran, offers assistance in connecting a veteran and his or her family with possible veteran’s benefits, familiarity and close relationships with local and regional Veteran’s Administration hospice/palliative care connections, and veteran-to-veteran volunteers.

It helps, said Gruber, to have someone there who knows what vets go through. He said that the ability to honor veterans, for him, was “so rewarding. It’s so rewarding to know that you made a difference to help these veterans as they’re nearing the end of their lives.”

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