A Gentle Death: Five Months with Hospice

Following the death of her husband, John H. Ross, in December 2002, Barbara O’Neil Ross began writing about their experience. John spent over five months in the care of  Hospice of Cambridge in  MA.  Both John and Barbara were strong believers in the benefits of hospice care, becoming familiar with hospice through reading and the work and efforts of good friends. After the death of Barbara’s mother in 1983, which Barbara felt was prolonged unncessarily causing her mother additional suffering, her support for hospice intensified. She and her husband both knew that they wanted to give John 'a gentle death.'  Barbara’s nine-part series, A Gentle Death: Five Months with Hospice, captures the essence of hospice care and the various roles the hospice team can play in the lives of the dying and their loved ones.

Barbara O'Neil Ross has a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University, and a teaching degree from the University of California in Berkeley. She taught language arts and math in Colorado, San Francisco, and Manhattan before marrying and moving to Cambridge, MA. In her 30's she did the illustrations and some writing for two cookbooks published by Doubleday. Since then she has focused on art projects, including several environmental pastel series, and has taken several writing courses. Currently, Barbara is a professional artist living in Palo Alto, CA. She is an avid supporter of hospice.

Except for her own name and that of her husband, Barbara has changed the names of all the characters in her stories for privacy reasons.
© Barbara O'Neil Ross.

Read A Gentle Death - Part 1 >