Just took a batch of Thai granola from the oven, its warm red curry breath filling the kitchen with an unexpectedly pleasing aroma. We’re branching out in the business, stretching just enough to put a toe into flavor palettes that teeter on the line of sweet and savory. With touches of olive oil, coconut and just enough maple syrup to offset the sriracha tones, I think we may have a new hit on our hands.

I should write for the Wine Spectator, yes? If only I knew as much about wine as I think I do about granola. I’ll keep my day job for now.

Speaking of which, I’m looking down the barrel of a tightly scheduled week and feeling rather up to the challenge of keeping all the plates spinning atop their wobbly sticks. Back-to-back meetings and appointments in a healthcare setting don’t allow for the unexpected crisis for which everything else must be set aside. As planful as I try to be (and humbly, succeed most of the time), there’s no wiggle room in the coming five days; even lunch will be at my desk or on the fly and I’ll be pulling into our long driveway past dinnertime at least two nights this week. We’ll see how ragged my self-care practice looks by Wednesday.

But when I take a closer look at the details of those meetings, I back away from the edge of anticipatory calendar frenzy and consider the nature of my work. For nearly all of my forty-plus hours this week, I’ll be meeting with people who want to do something for someone other than themselves, hearing their stories that answer the question “What draws you to want to work in a hospice setting with people who are both living and dying?” We’ve had a flood of applicants these past couple of months, most of them pre-med students from a couple of area universities with whom we have built strong partnerships. It’s hard not to listen to their fresh and eager explanations about why this kind of volunteer work means so much to them without wondering if one of them will be taking care of me in my dotage, delivering my diagnosis or outlining my final treatment plan. Their sincerity is almost too much to witness against a backdrop of headlines that would try to convince us that nothing good is happening in the world. I have strong evidence to the contrary as I look into the eyes of healthcare’s future guardians.

I did some math and can claim thirty-nine years in the field of volunteer resources management thus far (twelve of those in hospice), which adds up to thousands of interviews, thousands of connections between those who need and those who have. I stand in the middle, directing the traffic of selflessness toward the steady flow of humanity humbled by circumstance, a few miscalculated choices or just rotten luck. My colleagues and I in a hospice setting get to see people at their best alongside those at their worst and the gift of transformation that only volunteer service can set in motion. It’s my job and my joy to responsibly bring them through the halls of onboarding requirements and then quickly get out of their way, watching them tend to the final touches of a life well-lived, a bucket list not quite finished and the hard but necessary work of goodbyes. For no pay, these teammates of ours enter the rooms of regret and wistfulness, celebration and relief with equal respect and their undivided attention. In the end, that’s really the best gift anyone can give.

And it doesn’t stop at the bedside. They make gowns and neck pillows, sell hot dogs to patrons at our golf outing, snapping their foursome photos to hang on the company’s philanthropy wall back at the corporate office. They draft sympathy cards for clinical team members to sign and send to family members, and look at far too many spreadsheets to make sure the data they entered into them are correct. They fold letters into thirds and slide them into envelopes addressed to aunts and friends and coworkers who made a donation in memory of a loved one. They sit in a circle with 6-year-olds at a weeklong grief camp helping them glue photos of their grandmothers or siblings or parents to a cardstock cutout angel and send kites with handwritten messages of love soaring to the skies. They submit their timesheets with grace and gratitude for the chance to serve, to ease a burden and lift a heart.

I’ve encountered quite a wide and colorful swath of human nature these past four decades and there are no signs of it slowing down. Respect and a solid code of ethics will continue to keep the specifics carefully wrapped in confidentiality but rest assured, there are far more good souls doing good works than those seeking to sabotage the whole enterprise. I see them every day, the light in their determined eyes and the callouses on their unflinchingly gentle hands. Not afraid of hard work, they are comfortable in the awkward silence of questions that have no answers; they offer up smiles that will convince you hospitality is not a lost art but alive and well on the 12-bed unit where a wife squeezes her husband’s hand for the last time, bringing fifty-nine years of marriage to a close. They sit with her in the visitors’ lounge while the aides bathe his body and comb his hair. On their shoulders and in their hands, the future of healthcare is secure.

I’ll be tired by Friday. But if I’m given all the days in between this writing and then, it will be a rich and rewarded kind of tired.

It’s just the company I keep.