From Amanda Smiles, West Tennessee Healthcare Henry County Hospital
Paris, Tenn.–When Denise lost her husband, Tony, to leukemia at only 39, her world shifted forever. She was 29. “He was diagnosed July 17, 1992, and died July 16, 1993,” she recalls. “I quit working to be with him. We didn’t have children, and afterward, I needed something that would let me survive and take care of myself.”
That something became nursing. A career she never planned, but one that would eventually help her rebuild, heal, and serve families during life’s most fragile moments.
At the time, Denise managed a small restaurant and store called Uncle Will’s, perched on a hill near Paris Landing. “If I hadn’t gone into nursing,” she laughs, “who knows what path my life would have taken.” But life had other plans. In her thirties, as a non-traditional student at Murray State, she enrolled in nursing school, determined to rebuild her own story, one chapter at a time.
The journey tested her. She balanced classes with part-time work at a flower shop, living through seasons where everything felt moment to moment. “One Christmas, I had $75 to my name,” she says. “I had a home and food, but it was still one day at a time.”
Support came from her second husband, Barry, an engineer “who was good at math when I wasn’t.” With his steady belief in her, she pushed through and graduated in 1999. “When I got my acceptance letter into nursing school, I couldn’t even open it,” she remembers. “I made him do it because I was scared.”
But fear eventually gave way to certainty when she found Hospice.
She tried hospitals, home health, even dialysis, but after three months, she knew dialysis wasn’t the right place for her. Then came a part-time hospice opportunity. “I turned in my notice and never looked back,” she says. “It was where I was meant to be. It’s not a job. It’s just me.”
For Denise, hospice nursing isn’t about endings; it’s about helping families find peace, honesty, dignity, and hope in the final chapter. She carries the responsibility with deep reverence. “We’re the last chapter,” she says softly. “And if that chapter ends poorly, a lot of it is on us.”
She leads with truth and compassion. “I’m always honest,” she explains. “I tell families what I know and what I don’t. I don’t lie. But I’m never without hope, not until the very last breath.”
Denise understands the weight of grief personally. When her own father passed away, she carried guilt for not being there at the exact moment. Then a hospice nurse told her, “You needed to leave, he needed to go, and he couldn’t with all of you sitting around.” Denise calls it “a gift that released me from carrying guilt.”
Those small, sacred, soul-shifting moments define her care.
Ask Denise for a favorite story and she smiles. “Oh honey, I could tell stories forever.” One favorite involves Mr. Robert, his dog Cookie, who was “meaner than a snake,” and a litter of puppies. Before he passed, he told her, “Take care of Cookie and her puppies.”
So she did. She gathered the pups, found them homes, even keeping two herself, Oscar and Felix. Cookie eventually moved north, where she now goes everywhere “in a little bag” with a family who includes her in every photo. “She lives in New Jersey now,” Denise says, “and she’s in every family picture.”
That’s Denise. Caregiver, advocate, story-finisher, and steady ground for families who need it most.
Since 2008, Denise has served with the same Hospice organization. She has earned awards and community admiration, but she will tell you none of that was the point. “I just want to make sure the last chapter is a good one,” she says. “That’s all I want.”
Her hope for miracles isn’t seasonal, but the New Year always feels like a gentle reminder to notice them. “I ask God all the time, ‘Let me see a miracle.’ And I have. Maybe not the kind people expect, but I’ve seen them. Every single day.”
Denise’s journey reminds us that sometimes the hardest heartbreaks lead us to the most meaningful callings. Some call it a coincidence. Some call it resilience. Denise simply calls it her calling. Meant to be.