The women and men wore business suits and trench coats. It was noon, a Friday, the ending hours of a busy workweek. They gathered in the parking lot for the dedication of the new Hospice House, but their minds were on other matters: calls to return, deadlines to meet, weekend plans to organize.

And then the dedication began. The mood shifted from busy mind to open heart where stirred these lines from Emily Dickinson:

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me.

Hospice House, 367 E. Seventh Ave., is a 12-bed facility decorated in the soothing tones of the most welcoming homes. Each room features large picture windows, allowing light to stream in. In this newest addition in this lower South Hill neighborhood, women and men will die, attended by family – if they have family – and by kind strangers if they do not.

Hospice Home is the culmination of a vision that began in 1975 in borrowed office space at Gonzaga University. A dozen local pioneers in the death-and-dying movement believed a person’s last days should not be days of high-tech machinery and isolation. They helped establish Hospice of Spokane, but a Hospice House? It seemed then an impossible dream.

“Today, 30 years later, we are here to celebrate that dream come true,” Johnny Cox, one of those pioneers, told the crowd.

Angee Murillo’s mother, Darlene Segerstrom, died in a Hospice House in Great Falls. Murillo told those gathered: “She was cared for by angels. It’s not a sad place, though sadness happens here. It’s a place of peace and comfort.”

The nation’s 76 million baby boomers are slowly accepting that they cannot outrun death. As they swept through every other developmental milestone, they changed society’s attitudes and behaviors. May they also be able to change the fear and denial of death that persists in our culture.

Hospice House is a welcome, outward sign of a society ready to awaken to the reality of death. It is as needed in a vibrant community as child-care centers, schools, hospitals and senior centers. Hospice House reminds us of the compassion and kindness available here when death stops for those we love and, inevitably, for the rest of us.