I want to let you know that Connie Martell died last night in Saratoga Springs hospital, she was comfortable and with her family. Morgan Jones from the Mansion called me early this morning, and I appreciated that, her family requested that Maria and I be told right away, and I am grateful for that as well.

This photo is the last one I took of Connie, in the Samaritan Hospital in Troy, N.Y. this past Sunday.

First, I am thinking of all you good people out there who gave Connie one of the best and most meaningful years of her life this past year. I will not ever forget the yarn, books, cards, letters, needles and patterns that came to her in a river and transformed her life. Thank you.

“What does love look like?,” asked St Augustine.

“It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.”

What does love look like? It looks like every one of you.

Together, we  helped Connie and proved that we can make a profound difference in the lives of people if we look for good instead of anger and judgment. In a difficult world, we can lift people up, not tear them down.

Love also looks like the staff of the Mansion, who adored Connie and took the most wonderful care of her.

I do not have enough words to express my gratitude to the Army of Good. Connie appreciated you every day as she sat amid a mountain of yarn and read me your letters. She could hardly  believe your generosity at first, then came to proudly accept it.

You never once failed her, not even at the end, when she was fading and your letters and cards began to arrive at her rehabilitation center.

I went out to the barn this morning to tell Maria, and we both hugged one another and did some crying. Maria’s deepening friendship with Connie made  the relationship more meaningful. They truly came to love one another, and when we visited with Red, Connie beamed, as if she was in a cocoon of love.

It was poignant to see the two of them together. Maria would kneel down and the two would chat like sisters, Connie was open and unguarded with Maria, and the two of them planned many art projects in the future. Red would put his head in Connie’s lap, she would stroke him while she and Maria spoke.

We tried a dozen times to get Connie to the farm, but she was not physically to get there with her oxygen tubes and tanks and trouble walking. Connie fought valiantly to get better and back to the Mansion, but her condition worsened a month or so ago,  her body couldn’t come along on this trip.

We are both grateful that Connie’s pain and suffering was over, Red and I saw her body fail day by day, she could no longer eat, walk, or have a minute without pain. Her back was in agony at the end, she struggled to breathe.

Last Sunday, in the hospital in Troy, I knew I was saying goodbye.

I asked her for the very last time if there was anything I could do for her, a question i asked her so often it became a joke with us.

“Get me a new body,” she said, smiling. There was no longer anything else we could give her. She never lost that biting wit.

Connie adored Red and he returned the favor, she just lit up when she saw him, and he loved to sit by her feet and keep her company. Quite often, I would just leave him there while I did my rounds, and he was happy to be with her.

She was the Queen of the Mansion, I thought, I am sorry for the pain her loss will cause the residents and the staff.

She will be very much missed there, she was a formidable presence, and was sharp and focused right up to the end. She always knew what was going on, in her life and around her.

Last week, she told me she thought God was ready to receive her, and she was ready to go. She had no wish to stay past her time, and she was determined to shape her death. No feeding tubes for her, she told me, and she told the doctors as well.

Connie was feisty and sardonic to the end.

She loved to project her gruff exterior, but it could not mask a big heart. She told us Sunday that she had purchased a winter sweater for Gus and she wanted us to find it back in her room if she didn’t get back there.

She had hoped to knit one herself, but she could no longer knit. During the year, she made hundreds of scarves, hats, mittens and sweaters for children in hospitals, fellow residents and staffers with your wool, it gave her purpose and meaning in the last year of her life.

I loved to see her so busy knitting when I came, she had been a bit adrift before that. At night, she pored through the books and letters that you sent her.

I’ve been doing this work for some years, and I have always been careful about boundaries.

In hospice and elderly work, there is, after all, only one ultimate outcome. Getting too close is an invitation to burn out.

Connie was the first person I met at the Mansion, the first one I asked for help in supporting, the first one to be supported so consistently and thoroughly in this way. She was the mother of the Army Of Good in many ways, this work showed me how to do it.

Connie was my gateway to this mystical place in this difficult time, and she opened my heart up in many ways. She taught me the value of doing good rather than arguing about it. And your support for her gave me the confidence to go forward.

I will be honest, I am glad her suffering has ended, she told me many times recently that she was ready to go, especially if she could not return to the Mansion, which seemed more and more unlikely every day.

Maria and Red and I are going to the Mansion now to say goodbye to her room and reflect a bit on our extraordinarily relationship with her. Maria will miss her very much. Me too.

Thanks once more for helping her, and for her blue chair, which she never got to see. It will go to someone else who needs it.

Love and compassion to you. Godspeed Connie, I know you will be in a better place. This is what love looks like.