Melanie Haupert
She’s maintaining a peaceful retreat
Melanie Haupert’s two passions come together in a garden.
The Project GREEN and Iowa City Hospice volunteer is in charge of the Hospice Volunteer Site maintenance — an area with three stone benches, 1,500 daffodils in the spring and roses in the summer. Engraved bricks with the names of hospice volunteers make up a little square patio area around a stone sign signifying Iowa City Hospice.
“It’s a place where people come and just sit quietly,” she said. “It’s a real love of mine. Real special spot.”
Haupert said she has been a hospice volunteer for more than five years, doing so because she enjoys “the opportunity to help people when they need help the most. And that includes the family of the person who is sick.”
“By doing the chores, the dailies for them, you allow them time to be together,” she said.
And even though a lot of times people say they think hospice work is disheartening, to Haupert it is more about helping people in a time of need.
“It’s more of an uplifting experience than a depressing one,” she said. “I believe in hospice care. I believe in the principle of it.”
Haupert said she wanted to be a hospice volunteer for a long time, but the training sessions didn’t mesh with her schedule. But when Iowa City Hospice started doing three all-day trainings instead of multiple night trainings, she was there.
“Almost anybody who has time to volunteer, there’s a job in hospice for them,” she said.
Haupert also helped those in need — of directions — at University Hospital.
“I loved taking people where they needed to go because I could just feel their stress level decrease,” she said.
Her hospice care skills also brought a sense of community to her neighbors in Forest Gate.
About six year ago, when a neighbor who lived alone developed terminal cancer, she rallied the neighbors to help him with his daily tasks — bringing in the mail and newspaper, cleaning the cat’s litter box and organizing his medications.
“It was definitely a neighborhood effort,” she said. “Everybody worked.
“I think his life was much more pleasant because of the neighbors.”
— Rachel Gallegos
