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Brattleboro Area Hospice is an independent, community-based, non-profit volunteer hospice organization. All of our services are free of charge to anyone living in Southeastern Vermont or bordering New Hampshire towns. Referrals to any of our programs can be made by a physician, home health care provider, nursing home, or family members. Brattleboro Area Hospice ( BAH ) was founded in 1979 by a group of community members concerned that their dying and grieving neighbors receive compassionate, appropriate assistance. BAH provides grassroots, volunteer-staffed programs to supplement and provide alternatives to the professional services utilized by dying and grieving community members. We also provide education and outreach to increase our community’s understanding of and ability to cope with the issues of death and dying. According to Hospice philosophy, until the moment of death people have physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs. Our Hospice Care Program addresses these needs and helps dying people live as comfortably and meaningfully as possible. Our culture does not endorse many processes or rituals that help bereaved people accept the painful but inevitable stages of grief ; unresolved grief can lead to serious, sometimes life-threatening physical and psychological difficulties. BAH Bereavement Care Services facilitate healthy adaptation to grief. Many people avoid thinking about the cycle of life and death, and suggest that working with the dying and grieving “”””morbid”””” and “”””depressing.”””” Our Education and Outreach programs seek to address this avoidance, to increase acceptance of death and grief as natural aspects of life.