Word: matronly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...nurturing begins the moment the ambulance arrives with a new patient. Madeleine Duffield, the matron (nursing director), is at the door with a warm bed covered with a colorful afghan. Questions like "Doctor, am I going to die?" are answered honestly. "Deception is not as creative as truth," says Saunders firmly. "We do best in life if we look at it with clear eyes, and I * think that applies to coming up to death as well...
...Christopher's, more than 13,000 people have died, including her mother. "If death doesn't get to you, I doubt you should be in it," she admits, and in the past, she has consulted a psychiatrist for problems she experienced in recovering from a bereavement. But former Matron Helen Willans insists that since Dame Cicely was married for the first time eight years ago, "she has been a much happier person." She shows immense tenderness to her husband, bringing him to the hospice every day from their home nearby to paint in an upstairs studio. His pictures adorn nearly...
...stroll around, visiting their sick owners. Some patients sip whiskey with their visitors. "It's like a five-star hotel," says an elderly patient. More, perhaps, it is a throwback to the early days of the century, when care from birth to death was normally delivered at home. As Matron Duffield observes, "A hospital would insist on a strict diet for a dying diabetic patient. We serve chocolate cake." Saunders calls it creating an ambience of safety. "We make it possible to face the unsafety of death...
...last stop before the city of St. Andrews in the kingdom of Fife is the east coast and Muirfield, the most elegant estate on the Firth of Forth. No trees, no burns (creeks), 165 sand traps. It is raining sideways, and one of the caddies is a matron named Heather, who replies in confusion to every profane mention of the stuff. Keep a grip on the club, get a grip on yourself. The Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers goes back to 1744 and leather golf balls filled with boiled feathers. But the club still hasn't got around to building...
Amid so much activity, the stereotypes no longer fit. Through the 1970s, the archetypal gardener was over 50 and had time and money to spare: a smug matron with impeccable calceolarias, an eccentric rosarian, a spinster growing herbs. But now, says the National Gardening Association, 78% of America's households garden, and all the recent surveys suggest that the most fervent converts are between 30 and 49 and still evenly divided between men and women. Those who once bought geraniums and parched them in college dorm rooms have discovered that they can even garden competitively...