A Special Place Where Patients Spend Their Final Days With Family, Pets, and Peace Knowing Their Loyal Companions Will Be Cared For After They Pass
“For more than a century, the Budris family home on Ames Street has been a place where generations lived, loved, and in many cases passed peacefully among family, pets, and familiar surroundings. That deeply personal history now inspires Coming Home Hospice, a new nonprofit effort to create a place where others may experience the same dignity and comfort at the end of life.”
~John Budris
Coming Home Hospice Comes to Life for Those at End-of-Life
By Joan Quinn Eastman
Brockton, MA — Coming Home is more than a name. It is a vision — one embraced by those who believe in supporting worthy philanthropies, like John Budris, 73, of Brockton, and others mentioned below.
The former broadcaster and journalist so deeply reveres the idea of providing a uniquely compassionate end-of-life experience that he is donating his family’s ancestral home to make Coming Home Hospice a reality.
Several of Budris’s own ancestors lived out their final days in the very triple-decker he is now converting. Therein lies the inspiration for the project — one that will provide a much-needed service in Brockton.
“We have a treasured photograph of the backyard taken sometime around World War I,” says Budris. “It’s a summer day. My toddler father is surrounded by chickens. My grandfather is sitting on the grass with Rex the dog on his lap. My grandmother and two great-aunts are huddled together on a glider swing.
“And each of them lived, loved, and passed away right here in this place — at home, surrounded by family, their pets, and their memories. That’s what my friend and co-founder, Jason McAvoy, and I are trying to recreate at Coming Home Hospice in Brockton.”
Coming Home Hospice founder, John Budris, explains the vision behind the uniquely compassionate project.
Budris’s partner in the endeavor is Jason McAvoy, 54, a career hospice nurse born in East London who has spent most of his life in the Boston area since he moved stateside when he was in high school.
“I vividly recall the first conversations John and I had about the property,” says McAvoy. “Sitting there looking out to the gardens, I could feel the personal history — not just of his family, but of the many lives that have come home here over the last 125 years.” See more on McAvoy’s motivation here.
Budris’s grandfather — after whom John was named — purchased the large lot on Ames Street in Brockton’s “Village” neighborhood around 1900, some years after immigrating from what was then Czarist Russia, now Lithuania. At the time, Brockton stood at the edge of farmland while booming with the shoe manufacturing industry.
“My father told me that what we call the ‘little house’ was moved by oxen on log skids to the back of the lot to make way for my great-uncle and his crew to build the triple-decker and my grandfather’s tailor shop,” says Budris. “And we’ve been there ever since.”
Budris and McAvoy envision the triple-decker containing 12 patient rooms, while the single-family, two-story house would serve as a residence for staff, volunteers, or family members visiting from out of town.
Coming Home’s residence facility will be unique in a number of ways. No one will ever be turned away due to lack of ability to pay. And as both McAvoy and Budris have observed through their own professional and personal experiences, the common worry of being separated from beloved pets is already solved.
“We welcome our patients’ dogs and kitty cats to be there with us,” says Budris, “and we are committed to making sure that after someone passes, those beloved critters are cared for and have a home.”
To realize their vision, three major steps must be completed.
“The all-important first step we’ve reached,” explains Budris. “All of the complex legal framework with the IRS and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is complete. I’m happy to say their careful review has deemed us a qualified and lawful 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and all donations are 100 percent tax-deductible.”
The next phase, however, presents the greatest immediate hurdle — a kind of Catch-22, according to McAvoy. “In order to receive Medicare certification to support our future patients, we must first demonstrate that we can provide up to a year of quality hospice care to five patients in their own homes within the community,” he says.
And that comes at significant expense.
“Even with our medical team volunteering during this evaluation period, licensing fees, transportation, medications, and equipment could require upfront costs of $250,000 — and possibly more if complications arise,” he says.
Once the evaluation period is complete and Coming Home receives Medicare certification, the hospice can expand its in-home patient base and begin retrofitting the triple-decker for residential patients for whom in-home care is no longer possible.
“Raising these seed funds might not seem insurmountable in some communities,” says McAvoy. “But Brockton is a city of very modest means — which helps explain why it currently has no residential hospice.”
Many have already generously given time and counsel to the effort. Renowned Boston architect Patrick Ahearn has pledged to shepherd the architectural retrofitting of the two buildings and surrounding property pro bono. “That represents an enormous contribution,” says Budris. Several local contractors with ties to Brockton have offered to pitch in without charge as well.
“When I see the headlines every day about billions of dollars in fraud and theft in all of various social programs and imagine the good a minuscule fraction of that could create here, well, it’s pretty frustrating, to say the least,” he says.
Budris then takes a big breath, smiles broadly, reminiscent of his father’s grin. “I know there are angels out there.”
A Home, a Garden, a Century of Memory
For more than a century, the Budris family home on Ames Street in Brockton has been a place where generations lived their lives to the fullest — and, when the time came, passed peacefully among family, pets, and familiar surroundings. That deeply personal history now inspires Coming Home Hospice, a new nonprofit effort to create a place where others may experience the same dignity, comfort, and companionship at the end of life.
If you believe every life deserves to end with dignity, comfort, and the companionship of a beloved pet, please consider supporting cominghomehospice.org.
Images courtesy of Coming Home Hospice.
