JAY — Lois King is a busy woman who still finds time to send personalized notes and poems to bereaved families.

She also takes the time to learn about a person in hospice care from their family and creates a chart using clipped art and sometimes words to give insight into that person’s life.

The project, which she calls “Chart A Life,” helps the person in care, their family and those who take care of them to learn more about them, King said.

She became interested in hospice care after her mother received it before she died.

King took an end-of-life care adult education class and later became an indirect volunteer at Beacon Hospice in Augusta. She started a bereavement poetry program there.

Her mother loved poems and had a shoe box full of clippings, along with boxes and boxes of stationery and note cards, King said. She would write a note to somebody every day, she said.

King went through her mother’s poetry and now has 14 poems to choose from. Her mother’s stationery is gone so she creates her own.

“I started out using my mom’s note paper, but I have sent out over 500 personal notes and poems,” she said.

King was hesitant to start doing life charts. She has a full-time job and volunteers with 4-H and Extension Homemakers among other groups. In her spare time she quilts, knits, sews and bakes and has many more interests in addition to her family.

When Kelly Herlihy, volunteer coordinator at Beacon House, first sent out an email to see if someone was interested in making life charts, she didn’t respond.

“I said, ‘I am not doing that,'” King said. “I resisted.”

When the second email came, she did the same.

“When the third email came, I said, ‘I will do it if you can’t find anybody,'” she said.

She was told she was it.

She soon learned it was fun to do.

“It is like scrapbooking,” King said.

Herlihy gave her some forms with questions on them.

King calls the families to see if they would like a life chart. If so, she asks them for answers to the questions.

Most families ask to have the charts done.

“I start collecting materials,” she said.

She starts searching and clipping photos from magazines and advertisement flyers from grocery stores and other places.

The clippings are labeled and kept in drawers.

Sales flyers are very good to get people’s favorite things including picture of pies, she said. She clips photos of places they like to visit, food they like to eat, favorite colors and more. She then attaches them to foam-core boards and puts the person’s first name on them in big letters.

“It helps people who come in contact with them to know a little bit about them,” she said.

She enjoys talking to family members. Some of the stories make her laugh.

“It takes me four hours to do a board. I have done more than 30 charts in two years,” she said.

She was recognized in December for her work for Beacon House. She was named the company’s Spirit of Excellence 2015 Volunteer of the Year out of 450 nominations, King said.

“I get satisfaction knowing that I am helping people,” she said of her work.

dperry@sunmediagroup.net