Barbara Jones considers being in the presence of death "a wonderful privilege." As a longtime hospice volunteer and one of the original hospice nurses in the Monadnock area, the 83-year-old Keene resident has enjoyed this privilege perhaps hundreds of times.

"Living in the immediate presence of death is a wonderful gift," the soft-spoken Jones says. "I am continually amazed and grateful that people let me in at this intense time of their lives."

Many would say that Jones brings a gift to them, as well. The slender, white-haired woman is described by Edie Clark as "an incredibly angelic presence." About ten years ago, Jones was the hospice nurse for Clark's mother as she was dying from cancer in Clark's home in Harrisville.

"Barbara has this way about her," says Clark, "so gentle and without artifice. She came in quietly and knew exactly what needed to be done. It was all about my mother's comfort. She understood that this was a very sacred time. It's part of her selflessness – she was not intrusive or obvious but she was so there."

Jones' friend Marie Kirn and longtime hospice colleague describes her as "an incredibly gentle woman who is powerful at the same time.

"Barbara is so strong, so centered and so clear in her commitment to the good and the right," says Kirn. "She has a depth of connection with not only the work (of hospice) but with the people. She is so able to be with whoever she's with, to be right there and connected at a deep level. She invites depth," Kirn says, "without imposing it."

Now living in Hartland, Vermont, Kirn co-founded hospice in Peterborough and worked closely with Jones in the late 1970s to merge the Keene and Peterborough groups.

"Barbara was a real mentor and leader in the hospice movement in southern New Hampshire," says Kirn. "Pioneer is the word that comes to mind."

GROWING UP IN CHINA

Jones came by her nursing career honestly. Her mother was a nurse and her father a physician. Both were also Northern Baptist missionaries and Jones, along with her brother, Harold, and sister, Margaret, grew up in Ningbo, China, which is about 200 miles south of Shanghai.

This was the old China of the 1920s and '30s, Jones explains, well before World War II and the Communist Revolution that followed.

"We grew up behind compound walls," she says, "and really didn't get to know the Chinese people. And our parents were very protective."

Jones does have fond memories of one Chinese nanny, whom they called Atzbobo. But mostly she remembers a fairly lonely life where she was home-schooled until the 7th grade and most of her contact was with her family and with the children of other Americans in China. Every six or seven years, the family would return to the United States for a year or so. Their home bases were Boston, where their church was located, and a summer home in Stoddard owned by Jones' grandparents. Jones and her mother ended up living in the Stoddard house for many years and it is now home for Jones' son Geoffrey.

RETURNING TO THE U.S.

n 1939, at the age of 18, Jones returned to North America for good, entering Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada, to study nursing.

"It was a stretch to come back," Jones says. "In China, it took a month to get mail so we didn't really know much about what was going on. Everything was so different."

Jones studied for a year at Acadia, then entered the pioneering nursing program at Simmons College in Boston. She also studied for three years at Newton-Wellesley Hospital School of Nursing in Boston.

Only two weeks after returning to the U.S., Jones met "the most handsome man on the face of the earth," she says. "He played the violin beautifully and was a writer. He was a gift right out of heaven."

Frangdon Jones and Barbara courted for several years as they both pursued their academic studies and were married in 1944, right after Barbara graduated from Newton Wellesley. The next weekend they both enrolled at the University of New Hampshire, where Barbara earned a bachelor's degree in nursing and Frangdon a bachelor's degree in English.

Meanwhile, World War II had begun and Jones' parents were still in

China. The family did not hear from them for more than a year and eventually learned they had been in a Japanese concentration camp for six months. Her parents came home but their commitment to China was so strong, they returned after the war and stayed until the beginning of the Communist revolution in 1948.

NURSING CAREER

Jones started her nursing career right after graduating from UNH, a career that spanned more than 40 years and included work in hospitals, nursing homes and alcohol treatment centers; teaching at Elliott Community Hospital in Keene and for the University of New Hampshire; and private duty nursing.

"I worked part-time when the kids were little, usually nights," she says. "It blended nicely with raising kids."

Jones has three children – Geoffrey, who lives in Stoddard; Kevin in Lempster; and Vinney Loveland in Hancock. She also has three grandchildren, a granddaughter in Massachusetts and two grandsons in Texas.

Her nursing inevitably included people who were dying. She became very aware of the need for people to be at home in their last days, away from the impersonality of hospitals and strangers. In 1967, her father's death from cancer had a great impact on her.

"He fell in the hospital and broke his back," she says. "So he spent the last part of his life as a quadriplegic in a nursing home. He knew he was dying but didn't talk about it. People didn't talk about dying then. He could give a lecture on what was happening medically but he didn't talk about it and we didn't dare ask. I am still haunted by the realization that we didn't do right by Dad."

The late '60s and early '70s turned out to be a pivotal time in Jones' life. Her marriage of 27 years came to an end and her son, Kevin, went to prison for two years after he refused to be drafted to serve in Vietnam. He was in prison with the Berrigan brothers, Philip and Daniel, who were well-known anti-war activists. All three went on a water fast and were transferred to a prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri. Jones became an anti-war activist. She got involved with the Society of Friends, supporting conscientious objectors, and worked to bring public attention to the war and support for the objectors.

"Kevin going to prison changed my life completely," Jones says. "I decided that money and my career were not so important."

She stopped nursing and got into yoga and meditation. She also moved in with her mother in the Stoddard house and rented out her Keene house. Through her work with the Society of Friends, she started working with homeless people and alcoholics.

"I found the idea of the use of self as a therapeutic tool," she says, "that by being a friend and listener, you are also a healer. It's what any good nurse – any good human being – does."

Jones worked in Boston for a few years in programs for alcoholics, then returned to live in Stoddard. She worked at Beech Hill, an alcohol treatment center in Dublin, and as a private duty nurse in the area.

In 1975, Jones met a man who was to become a special part of her life. She describes Joseph Coughlin as a "wise guy" with "a real Irish wit.

"He loved his buddies and drinking," she says, "but he had a metamorphosis." He stopped drinking and, with Jones' help, got back in touch with his family. The two of them lived with Jones' mother in Stoddard for 17 years and Coughlin became well-liked in that community.

"That was something for my mother to take," Jones laughs, "her being the straight-laced Baptist she was."

Coughlin died suddenly from a heart attack in 1992 and Jones still mourns him.

"I was at the Keene house vacuuming," she says, "and I called to ask him what he wanted for supper. The sheriff answered the phone."

FOUNDING OF HOSPICE

This was the time that the hospice movement was gaining a foothold in the U.S. Dame Cicely Saunders, who established hospice in London, became a visiting faculty member at the Yale School of Nursing. And a book by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, "On Death and Dying," was becoming an international best-seller. In it, Kubler-Ross identified the five stages through which terminally ill patients progress and made a plea for home care as opposed to treatment in an institutional setting. She argued that patients should be able to participate in the decisions that affect how they die.

People like Jones and Kirn were reading books and articles on hospice. In Keene, Jones joined with other pioneers like Mary Alther and Joan Freedman to form a hospice study group in Keene.

Ken Jue, who now heads Monadnock Family Services, was involved in those early discussions about starting hospice in this area, and served on the first board of directors when the group formally incorporated in 1981 as Hospice of Cheshire County.

"Barbara was part of this incredibly dedicated group of people," he says, "who were focused on how to help our community come to a positive approach to helping the terminally ill face death She didn't do it out of self interest, but did it for the community and because she felt hospice was a much-needed service.

"Barbara is a sweetheart," Jue adds. "She has given so much time and energy and effort. She's so understanding and supportive of people in the terminal stages of their lives and of their families. She's an incredibly loving person."

For the last 30 or so years, Jones has been involved full force in the hospice movement. To this day, as a hospice volunteer, she continues to accompany people in their final months and days and hours of life. If she could have her wish, she says, she would have everyone experience their death at home surrounded by family and friends. And she would encourage everyone to do three things before they die: make contact with all the important people in your life and tell them you're sorry; ask for their forgiveness and tell them you forgive them; and say "I love you."

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

This is part of what Jones describes as the "unfinished business" of life and what is so valuable about a hospice supported death.

"It is important to make time for death," Jones says. "Taking time to die is a gift; it is really an intense time of living. Yet so many people are being robbed of this time with the technology that keeps them going, being told to not give up, to try one more treatment. Suddenly everything fails, and there is no time. We need to slow down, be real about what's happening and take the time to tie up our loose ends."

At 83, though healthy, Jones herself is beginning to tie up her loose ends. Her sister Margaret, whom she was not close to for many years, is dying of cancer. Jones, along with her brother, Harold, visits Margaret every couple of weeks in and the three siblings spend time going to museums or just talking.

Another loose end for Jones the Gari Kline Hospice Volunteers' Fund. It was created to honor Kline, a longtime hospice volunteer who died in 2001. Now at a little more than $2,000, the fund is available to hospice volunteers to use for their patients and families for the little extras that may not be available anywhere else – a massage, perhaps, or a special trip or visit.

Jones would like to pass the mantle for the fund on. "I'm running out of steam," she says.

You wouldn't know it though. Whether she's helping with the Circle of Caring at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Keene or driving to Peterborough on one of the coldest days of the year to be with a friend who is having surgery or walking J.J., Jones keeps a busy schedule.

Oh yes, J.J. Jones' story would not be complete without mentioning her poodle, Jasper Jones.

"My little J.J.," she says fondly, "he's such a character in my life. He sleeps with me and is up and off the bed at 5 in the morning and he's quite vocal about wanting to go out. He always wants to come with me, wherever I go, and sometimes he'll sneak into the car. In a little way, I think J.J. is Joe reincarnated with his apricot curly hair. He's a little demanding, a little jealous, a little controlling.

"And I love him," she says with quiet smile as she heads out the door to pick J.J. up at the poodle salon and take him to Peterborough with her.

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