Bereavement Volunteering: Supporting Families for 13 Months

Most people assume hospice support ends with the funeral. The federal Medicare hospice benefit says otherwise. Every Medicare-certified hospice in the United States is required to offer bereavement support to the surviving family for at least 13 months after the patient death. The 13-month window is intentional. It carries the family past the first anniversary of the death, through every holiday and birthday, and into the second year, which research from the Hospice Foundation of America and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization shows is often more difficult than the first. A hospice bereavement volunteer is one of the people who makes that 13 months of follow-up actually happen.

Bereavement volunteer work is different from patient-facing volunteer work. The volunteer never met the patient and may never meet the family in person. The role is built on cards, phone calls, support group attendance, and the occasional in-home memorial visit at the one-month, six-month, and twelve-month marks. The hospice agency provides a list of recently bereaved families with phone numbers, addresses, and notes about who was lost. The volunteer takes one or two families at a time, sends a card at the one-month mark, calls at the three-month mark, sends a holiday card in November or December, and calls again near the one-year anniversary of the death. The total time investment is roughly two to four hours per month per family. A retiree can comfortably manage three to six families at any one time.

The phone calls are short. The volunteer says: I am a hospice bereavement volunteer, I am calling to see how you are doing. The family may want to talk for an hour or may say not today and hang up after 60 seconds. Both responses are normal. The volunteer makes a note in the bereavement log, mails a follow-up card with a brief handwritten line, and schedules the next contact. A small percentage of families show signs of complicated grief or depression that need professional follow-up. The volunteer does not diagnose. The volunteer reports the concern to the hospice bereavement coordinator, who is usually a licensed social worker, and the coordinator follows up with a clinical referral.

Bereavement volunteering appeals to retirees who have personally walked through a major loss at some point in life and have done the work to process that loss. The role is emotionally lighter than vigil sitting or respite, but it is not weightless. Families on the call may cry, share dreams about the deceased, ask theological questions, or talk about regrets and arguments that were never resolved. The training program teaches volunteers to listen, validate, and stay with the feeling rather than fix it. Sources include the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization at nhpco.org, the Hospice Foundation of America at hospicefoundation.org, the Center for Loss and Life Transition at centerforloss.com, and AARP at aarp.org.