Mary Porter is an angel.  I first met her a few days before my childhood friend, passed away from cancer.  I was visiting David to spend his final days with him.  I discovered Mary had connected deeply with my friend within hours of being hired. This connection proved invaluable over the last few days of my friends life both at home and in the hospital, a period to which I was a witness. Mary was his guide and a great source of comfort and security.  I had never been involved in the end-stage of someone’s life, but Mary was instrumental in creating a loving, accepting and caring space in which my friend could do the final work of his life. She provided a space in which his friends and family could give him the support he needed. 

  I saw her work very effectively with hospital staff to advocate for the patient's needs both from the perspective of additional recourses and also to ensure that he was allowed to move through his dying process without unnecessary medical intervention. The family agreed that the most important contribution that Mary made was to help my friend and his wife to understand the process he was going through and greatly reduce their fear and anxiety. This gave his wife and family the support they needed to be fully present.

I have heard said that supporting someone through their final dying process is a powerful experience.  I can now attest to this.  But what made this experience truly extraordinary was the involvement of Mary Porter. 

Simon G.

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I met Mary Porter when my father was critically ill. He got sick pretty suddenly and like most of us, my family was pretty unprepared, not to mention devastated. All we could see was the tragedy and none of us could make any sense of it at all.

The person who changed that for us was Mary Porter. For one thing, she has been there, and I can not overestimate the comfort of someone who is calm and familiar around something so frightening. For another, she is warm, and direct, and embodies gracious bedside manner. But what makes Mary truly special is her wisdom around death. Basically, she accomplishes the impossible: She manages to reframe death as something that's part of the order of things.

Not positive exactly but a necessary part of life, and something that has to be embraced. Until we met Mary such an idea had never occurred to us. But afterwards it became the only thing that gave us comfort, a glimmer of an idea that maybe, maybe, this experience was part of life. In our family, we think of her as an angel of mercy."

​Hanna 

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​​No one should have to die without Mary Porter by their side. 
That is the best way to sum up my experience with Mary during my father's final week of life and his passing. My father had just been released from the hospital into our care for home hospice. We didn't know how much time left we had with him nor how much he might suffer as the cancer would take over his body. We were frightened, worried, overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted. With minimal help from the Medicare Hospice plan, we knew we needed additional support.
When Mary stepped into our home and our lives, she immediately brought a sense of calm and confidence to us all, even my father. He was a man of high standards and critical eye who was difficult to please, but with Mary, he softened and accepted her. I saw that he trusted her and seemed to feel more at peace as he reminisced about his life and talk about dying. She also helped the rest of us talk about what was happening, eased our fears, and helped us medically care for him. For me personally, Mary helped me to be fully present in my father's dying process, to feel deeply, to access a certain grace about life and death, and as a result I have been able to feel more at peace too. 
In the final hours of my father's life, Mary met with my family and assisted us by advocating for important details of his final care so he would suffer as little as possible. We were able to lean on her and it was a priceless gift. I don't know how we would have managed without her as his final hours were quite difficult. I would urge anyone facing similar circumstances to enlist the services of Mary Porter. 
Pamela S.

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