There is a serenity about Terre Young as she sits in her office on a mid-week morning. From the Asian art prints hanging on her wall, to the light streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows, to the calm lilt of her melodic voice, she is clearly at peace.

As executive director of Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard for the past 10 years, Ms. Young has earned spectacular praise for her stewardship of the organization. Now she is ready to retire, and many of the people she has touched through her work greet that news with alarm, not serenity. She will leave what she calls “the best job on Martha’s Vineyard,” in the fall of 2016.

“I am very devoted to this job, to this work, to my staff, to my board, to this community, to the families that we have cared for,” she said. “I am going to be 68 years old. I’m healthy. I’m young. I have a wonderful husband. We have a little farm. I want some time. This has been a wonderful job. I have the best job on Martha’s Vineyard. It’s very hard for me to leave, yet I have really a need for less work, less energy devoted to one most important thing.”

There might be nothing more rare on Martha’s Vineyard than a harsh word for Ms. Young.

“I’ve never had my heart and soul touched the way this job has done,” said Betsy Marshall, one of five nurses who care for terminally ill patients. “Terre taught all of us from the beginning, people shouldn’t have to die until they die. They can live until they die. That’s a huge difference.”

"It's very hard for me to leave, yet I really have a need for less work," said Ms. Young. — Tova Katzman

Will Monast, a Gazette columnist, died in February of this year. Like many who enter hospice care, he did not do so willingly. Part of the job of hospice nurses and volunteers is steering patients toward acceptance.

“My dad was really ill,” said his daughter Sarah Monast. “He was really not ready to think of dying. He really didn’t want to communicate about palliative treatment. He was really difficult to make comfortable.”

On a January evening, Ms. Monast was desperate. Her mother was beyond exhausted. She called Ms. Young.

“Terre was on the phone with me for

two hours, giving me all the options and all the routes hospice could take to help my dad,” Ms. Monast said.

When the end was near, Mr. Monast needed round-the-clock care.

“My dad didn’t want any nurses or any care, because it freaked him out,” Ms. Monast said. Again, she called Ms. Young, asking if there was anyone who could sit with him, to let her mom get some rest.

“Terre drummed up these volunteers, these amazing people came, and they sat with my dad from 9 p.m. to 6 in the morning, making sure he was comfortable. I called her in the afternoon, and she had them ready for that evening.”

At any one time, about 40 or 50 volunteers help Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard, both with patient care, and with fund raising events.

Ms. Young has instilled a standard of hospice care that includes caring for the living, as much as the dying. Many families faced with a dying relative have no idea how to handle it, not only emotionally, but in the hundreds of physical things that have to get done. How to lift a patient. How to give a shot. How to find time to get to the bank, or drop off the recycling. When to call a funeral home.

“Terre is an angel,” said Myra Stark, whose husband Leslie died in July. When Mr. Stark collapsed in their home shortly after returning from a hospital stay she first turned to friends to help with the urgent situation. Next she called hospice. “They have a nurse on 24 hours a day,” Ms. Stark said. “She came right over. She calmed me down, and she calmed him down.”

Lori Perry was the nurse assigned to the Stark family, and Ms. Stark questions whether she could have survived without her.

“I would call her whenever I needed her, and there she was,” Ms. Stark said. “As soon as she walked in the door, Leslie felt better, and I felt better. Hospice is not only the actual nurses. From the time he got sick they offered me counseling. You would say to yourself, I don’t have to break down until I see the counselor at 10 a.m. on Tuesday. Somehow that got you through the week.”

Hospice patients receive care at their home, at the hospital and at other care facilities on the Island. Families have much to worry about when a loved one is dying, but for Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard, the cost of hospice care is not one of them.

“We don’t charge the families anything,” Ms. Young said. “We can do that because we have the support and confidence of our community. They send us money, they come to our events, and in turn, we help them when it is their turn. I can’t tell you how many merchants whose door I knock on to ask for 90 pounds of salmon or something from their shelves for our silent auction, they say ‘Yes, what would you like? I hope you’re here when it’s my turn.’”

The organization made a decision from the start to forego Medicare certification, and the reimbursement that comes with it. That leaves them free to decide their own staffing levels, and care for patients without restriction or constraint. But that comes with its own cost. The organization is in a constant state of fund raising.

There was no single moment that prompted Ms. Young’s decision to retire. Rather, she said, it was a gradual realization that this is the right time for her.

“What I see in my mind’s eye is sort of this build up of tiredness,” Ms. Young said. “It’s mostly related to the fund raising. I’m very tired when it’s over. I don’t know how many more events I can do and keep the required energy and stamina.”

Many people tell Ms. Young they could never do what she does. They couldn’t handle the emotion, the sadness, the loss.

“It isn’t what everyone can do,” Ms. Young said. “We all feel it, we all experience it, we’re feeling, caring people. We’ve built this comforting circle around ourselves to support us during those times. It isn’t ever easy.”

She said she informed her board of directors of her plans to retire last year, and announced her decision publicly last month, to insure plenty of time for a smooth transition.

“It’s a good time,” she said. “With the choice of the right people, there is some new energy, some new spark of a different way, or better ways to support this community with the special work and the difference we make.”

The hospice board of directors has formed a search committee, and begun work to recruit a replacement. Treasurer and board member Harvey Beth said the committee has a difficult task.

“She is on the top of her game, and she’s going to be hard to replace.”