Clem Schultz had what his family called a good life.

The Wells area farmer raised hogs and grew crops and in his retirement years he turned to woodworking and volunteering through his church and neighborhood. He was a devoted husband and family man with a wonderful sense of humor.

And when he became terminally ill, Crossroads Community Hospice allowed him to have a good death, too.

Clem had always been healthy, eating the right foods and staying active, said his wife, Janet.

But then he had open-heart surgery, followed by congestive heart failure. Later, cancer set in.

It was late September of 2007 when doctors suggested the hospice program to Clem and his family. Hospice care provides compassionate care for people in the last phases of incurable disease so that they may live as fully and comfortably as possible.

“It gave us months of quality life, family time and time to get things together,” Janet said.

“Without hospice, Dad couldn’t have been here. He would have had to have been in the nursing home. And he wanted to be at home,” said his daughter, Leanne Tukua.

Hospice allowed Clem to be at home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and even when he was lying down and resting, he was able to near the sounds of his family close by.

“I asked him if the noise was too much,” Janet recalled. “But he said, ‘No. I love it.’”

“If he had been in a nursing home, we all couldn’t have gone and visited him,” added Leanne. “The holidays felt as normal as possible.”

And the family was left with a lot of good memories, they said.

“Hospice is ‘fantabulous,’” Janet said.

Hospice took care of getting the equipment and medications Clem would need. “They helped with things I didn’t even know I’d need help with,” Janet said.

Hospice educated the family on the symptoms of Clem’s disease and how it would most likely progress. “We knew what to expect,” Leanne said. “It made it not so scary.”

And, she said, her father wasn’t afraid of the end, either.

“He was angry for about a week, then he realized he didn’t have a choice, so let’s make the best of it,” Janet said.

At one point during Clem’s illness, Janet herself became ill and was transported by ambulance to Albert Lea Medical Center. When she returned home, the hospice social worker came to see her.

“She said, ‘I didn’t come to see Clem, I came to see how you are doing. Without you, he can’t stay here,’” Janet recalled.

A hospice nurse came twice a week, taking care of medication needs and taught Janet the way to lift and transfer Clem without hurting herself.

“Mom kept trying to do everything,” Leanne recalled.

Hospice did send help to provide personal care for Clem and housework assistance for Janet.

“I really hated to let them go (after Clem’s death),” Janet admitted of the home health aides.

Hospice help was available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Late one night, Janet had to call because Clem forgot that he’d already taken some medicine and took it again.

“They told me what to do and to watch him,” Janet said. “They were on the phone with me again in the morning before I even got out of bed.

“He couldn’t believe what hospice was willing to do for him,” Janet said.

“Hospice made him feel like a VIP. It made all of us feel that way.”

Toward his last days, Clem needed a wheelchair, which hospice got for him. “He couldn’t wait to use that wheelchair,” Janet said. “He wanted to get up to the table and eat pizza and drink root beer.”

She was told to expect that Clem would lose his appetite toward the end of his life, but that never happened.

“He loved to eat, right up until the last day,” his wife said.

“He got to pick what he was hungry for,” added Leanne.

Being in hospice allowed Clem time for estate planning and even making his own funeral plans. “He picked all his godchildren to be pallbearers,” Janet added.

There was special time with the grandchildren, too, Janet said. The family put a recliner next to his bed and kids would sit next to him and do their homework. Siblings came to visit, too.

Leanne and her two brothers, Brian and Craig, took turns spending the night with their mother and father during Clem’s last days as well.

“It allowed him to have a chance for some special one-on-one time with everybody,” Leanne said.

But perhaps one of the best things hospice did was assure Clem that Janet and the rest of the family would be helped through the difficult time after he was gone. Clem died on Jan. 20, 2008.

Janet, Leanne, Craig and Brian all started receiving monthly newsletters from hospice with information on grieving. There was the opportunity to take part in bereavement and grief support groups, too.

Janet began attending a weekly coffee group for people who had lost a spouse that had been in the hospice program. She’s now been a part of it for 20 months, and it’s something she looks forward to each week.

“I’ve been in it long enough to remember my terrible first time there,” Janet said. “But now I have wonderful friends there.”

The group has had as few as eight members and as many as 20 over the months during which Janet has attended.

“There’s no counselor there,” she said of the coffee group. “We counsel each other.”

The weekly meetings “fuel me up to go out and face situations,” she added.

The widows in the group ask advice of the widowers about some of the things the husbands usually took care of, she said, and the men ask advice of the women about things their wives may have handled. Some men bring their garden produce to share with the women and women bring their home-baked goods for the men.

“It’s a peace of mind for us that she isn’t just sitting here alone,” Leanne said of her mother.

“I found that life will never be the same,” Janet said. “But it’s a new beginning.”