Doris Thome

Doris Thome passed away in November 2015. Born In Chicago, she spent her twenty-year marriage on the move. Each of her five children was born in a new location. In 1972 Doris settled in Santa Barbara, became a nurse and found her niche. She left Cottage Hospital for an even more challenging career, that of a hospice nurse. Then years of hospice nursing gave Doris insight into her patient’s deepest thoughts. From lavish lifestyles to inner city hovels, she received a gift of unimaginable layer. Death is a varied, intimate and as full of wonder as is life. Retirement led to new avenues, writing was one. Recalling her hospice patient’s, her charges nagged at her to get it right. Twelve years in the making produced her personal journey. My Way: Reckoning with Medical Death, was completed in 2015.

Doris was a worker bee, she learned gardening working next to her mother and has never stopped loving it. Working at the age of thirteen, she discovered her strengths: handling money, helping people, designing and sewing her own clothes and anything artistic. She credits her parents for she inherited many of her strengths. Doris is survived by her five children, their offspring and numerous great grandchildren as well as her only sister.