Dinners with Love Provides Meals for Hospice Patients and Their Caregivers

As anyone who has ever cared for a dying loved one will tell you, caring for a hospice patient at home is a physically and emotionally draining experience. Most caregivers have little, if any, time to care for their own needs, and many subsist on too little sleep and too little food. More than a few eventually get sick themselves.

But for some hospice patients and their loved ones, a small, Vermont-based organization is helping to change that just a bit. Known as Dinners with Love, it is a partnership between a network of Vermont hospices and restaurants that delivers one free restaurant-prepared meal per week to hospice patients and their loved ones.

Credit: tripadvisor.com

Started by hospice volunteer and former owner of Sheri’s Diner and Plan-It Sheri Catering, Sheri Sullivan, Dinners with Love is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Brandon, Vermont. The idea for the company occurred to Sheri when she began preparing home-cooked meals for the hospice patients she cared for as a volunteer back in 2002. Sheri saw how much a tasty meal comforted the patients (and the people caring for them) and decided to reach out to local hospices and restaurants and enlist their support. It took awhile, but in 2009, Dinners with Love was born.

Since then, the organization has delivered 12,400 meals to hospice patients and their families living in over 30 cities across the state.

How it Works

Mary Pleasant, a hospice volunteer and bereavement coordinator with Visiting Nurse Association & Hospice of Bennington has been coordinating Dinners with Love for VNA & Hospice for nearly a year. In an interview with the Bennington Banner, she explained how the all-volunteer program works.

When a new hospice patient or caregiver asks to enroll in the program, Mary sends them menus from each of the 16 Bennington restaurants that currently participate. Then, every Monday, she calls each patient and takes their meal order for the week. “It’s nice, because you get to chat with them, and they thank you,” Mary says.

Sheri Sullivan, founder of Dinners with Love
Credit: dinnerswithlove.org

After she collects the meal orders, Mary contacts the restaurants and about a dozen volunteer drivers to find out who will be available to pick up the food. Thursday is pick-up day, and meals are generally ready between 3:30 and 4:00 to coincide with dinnertime. Depending on how many drivers are available and where the clients live, deliveries can take an hour or several hours to complete.

The program is gratifying for everyone involved, Pleasant explains. “To see the smiles and hear the joy it brings to our patients, I think that’s what’s most important,” she says.”That’s what’s at the heart of hospice. I’m happy to be a part of Dinners with Love.”