Greg Gilman
As the mortal flame fades, he’ll be there
“I’ve done things backwards,” says Greg Gilman, busily directing deliverymen bringing in cartons of clothes that make laborers swoon. Labels like Redwing or Carhartt are not as glitzy as Givenchy or De La Renta, but don’t tell that to the guys who dig ditches or crawl through spidery spaces pulling wire. Weber’s is a working man’s store and the only kind of business Gilman has run all his adult life.
Gilman’s father bought the store from its original owner. Greg Gilman has been sole proprietor of Middletown’s oldest clothing store since he graduated college. Seemingly incongruously, work with the terminally ill came naturally. “I sat on a horde of boards. Eventually, it got boring. I decided to get off my duff and actually do something.”
Why Hospice? Gilman’s wife, Janet “Jimmy” Moffatt-Gilman was one of the original board members of the Orange County Mental Health Association. He’d heard of Hospice’s work through his wife and knew that it was something he wanted to take on.
“You spend 10 weeks in intensive training, at least three days and one night each week. There are all different kinds of volunteering jobs ... I’m a trained caregiver. I either go in to give the actual caregiver respite – maybe they need to go out and get some errands done or see a doctor themselves – or to provide companionship to the dying. They get a chance to verbalize things they may not want to say to their family. Maybe I’ll just sit there and read a book. Every situation is unique.”
One thing Gilman has learned about dying: “The façade comes down. These folks know they are dying. They don’t have to put on an act, they can just be themselves. No more b.s. In some ways, it’s a relief for them.”
The same goes for the families. They let their hair down with the volunteers, too. The end result is guys like Gilman give families a shoulder to lean on or a much-welcomed helping hand.
“For the rest of us, we have no idea what it is like for the caregiver. It’s a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week job and they know how it will end. If you ask the patient, ‘Where would you rather be? In a hospital or at home?’ Ninety-nine per cent of them want to be in their homes with people that care about them and who they love. In dollars and cents, the savings to the health-care industry is enormous. The cost of spending the last six months of life in a hospital are unbelievable; they are that expensive. Hospice is the kinder, compassionate way to treat those who are dying … keep them as pain free as possible and let them go in peace, surrounded by their loved ones and cherished possessions, not hooked up with tubes and monitors.”
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