Gift of Peace
Inspiration:
Director Ronald Sebilo-Tibbits, a domestic partner to a Hospice nurse, felt inspired to create a dramatic short film about hospice work. The titled Gift of Peace is in reverence to the gift of peace full departure that Hospice workers give to dying people every day.
The film is inspired by a reminder from Hospice social worker Michael Tscheu, LCSW,MBA that death is a beautifully ordinary experience.
Premise:
Premised on the idea that we often forget that death is part of life, the film portrays a hospice nurse who has to protect her patient from a negligent and depressed alcoholic care giver who is afraid to let her mother die peacefully.
Synopsis:
A super-professional hospice nurse, Atlanta, shows up at her patient's house to find Terra, the caregiver, drunk and passed out on the living room floor. She wakes Terra to make sure she is safe and then checks on her patient, who is in severe pain.
Terra, blinded by grief and alcoholism, tries to prevent Atlanta from administering pain medication. Terra just doesn't want to let her mother go with unfinished business. This is a subtlety in Terra's psyche that Atlanta eventually taps into. Terra blames her dying alcoholic mother for her own drinking problem and fears that if her mom dies an alcoholic she will too.
Atlanta decides to set aside her professional obligation to call Adult Protective Services and talks Terra through her anticipatory grief in order to get her to care for her dying mother. Eventually, Terra sobers up and helps her mother to die peacefully. We get to see what a peaceful death looks like.
Total Run Time: 10 minutes