RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS: HOSPICE PATIENT'S FLOWERS TELL IT ALL

Dorothy Volkerding knows a thing or two about faith.

First, the doctors said cancer would take her life by Christmas. Then they said she would be in a wheelchair by March.

She made liars out of them on both counts. Even though the disease exists throughout her body, Volkerding gets out of bed every day and does what she can to stay physically and mentally active. That usually is by making crafts and reading the Bible.

Nurses from Southeast Missouri Hospice, relatives and friends keep watch daily to be sure she is OK. One of the hospice's nurse assistants, Theresa Hodges, heard Volkerding mention Random Acts of Kindness Week and encouraged her to participate.

So the 79-year-old cancer patient began the painstaking work of making tissue-paper flowers and attaching her favorite Bible verses to them. Revelation 2:10 is her favorite. It reads, in part: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."

"I always did like to help people, but I didn't like to be in the limelight too much," Volkerding said. Her son Kenneth Volkerding had to convince her to let the Southeast Missourian do an article about her kind act.

Hodges said the 27 or so hospice patients who receive flowers this week will appreciate the gifts more because they will know another ill person made them.

Volkerding's daughter-in-law taught her how to make the flowers a few months ago, hoping the activity would help her husband's mother stay busy. It did. Volkerding began making them for Easter but gave many away.

To make the flowers, she takes several facial tissues, unfolds them and stacks them. Then she trims the edges and folds the tissues back and forth like a fan.

She wraps a pipe cleaner around the middle and then carefully separates the tissue layers.

"Did you know there are two or three layers in each tissue?" she said. "The real Kleenex brand are so much easier to work with. I had some of the others, but Kenneth brought me the good ones."

Her final step is to spritz each flower with a little perfume and attach a Bible verse to the stem.