An old friend who studied with one of Tiffany’s students made this lamp for me. These are butterfly ladies and they symbolize transformation. The transformation many of our patients go through as the end of life approaches.

The lamp also symbolizes for me resilience since it was smashed after falling over in the Loma Prieta earthquake in California but was easily put back together.

Cicely demonstrated both qualities, transformation as she transformed from nurse to social worker to physician to matriarch of hospice and palliative care and certainly resilience in the face of the resistance we all still face toward palliative care.