JOSH (Volunteer, Joseph's House, greeting Melvin White): Hello, how are you doing Mr. White? I'm Josh. Welcome.
LUCKY SEVERSON: Melvin White could not be greeted more warmly or graciously if he were checking into a five-star hotel.
PATTY WUDEL (Director, Joseph's House, to Volunteer): Would you just hang this up for Mr. White?SEVERSON: This is Joseph's House in Washington, D.C., the equivalent of a five-star hospice -- an extraordinary place that comforts the dying with a mixture of Christianity and Zen Buddhism. More than likely it will be Melvin White's last home. He is suffering from the final stages of colon cancer. Melvin says for years he was a cook at a local hotel and a pool hustler on the side. After he got sick, he got evicted.
MELVIN WHITE (Resident, Joseph's House): I came home from work from the hospital from chemo one day, start the key in the door, and it turned back in my hand. SEVERSON (to Mr. White): They changed the lock?
Mr. WHITE: Changed the lock on me.
SEVERSON: Melvin is the kind of person who Dr. David Hilfiker was thinking of when he founded Joseph's House 16 years ago as a place for terminally ill, homeless, African-American men with nowhere to die but the streets.
Dr. DAVID HILFIKER (Founder, Joseph's House): This was a very special place for many men. It became the first, the only place that they ever loved, ever had, that said, "You can stay here as long as you live." SEVERSON: For probably many of these men, this was the most loving home they ever had in their lives?
Dr. HILFIKER: Absolutely, absolutely. And certainly, I mean, they had been on the street for 20 years, and this is a chance to have a home.
SEVERSON: Although most of the 300 or so patients who have called Joseph's House home have been black men, more and more are women, like Theresa Batch. She has colon cancer.
THERESA BATCH (Resident, Joseph's House, talking about Tiffani Boerio): Well, she meets me every morning and greets me, so I call her "sunshine." This morning, the first word that came out of my mouth: "Hi, sunshine. Praise the Lord for you." SEVERSON: Theresa has been here three months, has some good days and some bad. She is surrounded by the proud faces of Joseph's House alumni.
Ms. BATCH: I look at the families that passed on, and some of them that didn't, that made it through the cancer that they had in their bodies, you know. And I see the beauty of their souls and their minds and their hearts, you know.
Ms. WUDEL (Commencing the house meeting): It's a special meeting, because today was the day that Melvin White came to join us.SEVERSON: Patty Wudel runs the place, to use a phrase of hers, with "exquisite attention." Patients are treated as honored guests, something they are not accustomed to.
Ms. WUDEL: Folks have suffered with addictions for a long time, suffered with not belonging, not being wanted or missed for a long time, carry a lot of regrets that their life turned out the way it did whether they were really responsible or not.
SEVERSON: She was attracted to Joseph's House partly because of the emphasis on the Social Gospel.
Ms. WUDEL: The Beatitudes sure play a big part for the foundation of Joseph's House as a place of justice and compassion, with Jesus as an important teacher.
SEVERSON: Patty was also attracted because the therapy here includes the tenets of Zen Buddhism.
Ms. WUDEL: It's developing a self-awareness, paradoxically to be able to forget myself and serve the needs of the person in front of me.
Dr. HILFIKER: Our hope is not to present God to anybody, but to see God in everybody, and to allow that person to have the relationship with God that is deepest for them.
Ms. WUDEL (to Mr. White, at meeting): My wish for you is that you will find deep healing here in all the ways that you really need it.
MARY (Volunteer, Joseph's House, to Mr. White, at meeting): I'm so happy that you are here, and I hope that you can sort of find physical warmth and joy and peace.
JOHN (Resident, Joseph's House): You just lay back, man, and let them do all they need to do, and you will be well. I know you'll be satisfied.Mr. WHITE: You know, I feel a whole lot better in just in this one day than I have been in the last couple of years, you know.
PRISCILLA NORRIS, RN (Nurse, Joseph's House): What is amazing to see happen over and over again is those who are sicker are cared for and paid attention to by those who are at that moment are stronger, and I don't mean us.
Ms. BOERIO: In some way the world has changed for me because of that experience, and I think that, yeah, in a lot of ways I will never be the same.
Mr. CRIBBS: More and more you become less capable, and you need the support of people to just take care of you. But at the same time there's a childlike quality of the person that tends to become much more joyful and more peaceful.
JOSHUA MURRAY (Resident, Joseph's House): I don't blame anybody. You know, I was born with it and, you know, I just have to take care of it. I don't blame my mother for, you know, giving it to me. I was mad, but I didn't blame her, you know. So, I'm still living.
