Waldo Rios
THE PERSON BEHIND THE PROJECT

MY
STORY

SCROLL

I grew up in Texas. Hispanic family. Close-knit. Wonderful parents. I planned to be a musician.


I played until I didn't. Then geriatric rehabilitation. Then fitness. Then nursing. Then nurse practitioner. Hospice found me by accident — I never went looking.


But I entered a world I didn't even know existed. I don't even remember hearing about it, perhaps only in passing, in school. A world my family didn't talk about openly. Not out of ignorance. Just the way we were raised. Death was present. It just wasn't named.

I've been naming it for fourteen years now.
THE RECORDER

My grandfather loved boxing. He still does. He was a baseball player but the "science of a good brawl" fascinated him. I became his recorder — cataloging matches, studying every round, jotting down the fights he was missing in the list, every name. Thrilla in Manila. The Rumble in the Jungle. I knew Ali's entire catalog.


Then in 1996, Muhammad Ali carried the Olympic torch.


I knew everything about him. Everything on tape, that is. What I saw live on TV stopped me cold. Nobody said anything. There was a respectful silence — a don't ask, don't tell weight in the room. My mom's face said it, and she didn't even like boxing. Something had shifted and we all felt it and nobody named it.

What I came to understand, slowly, was that the strongest thing about him was never the strength. It was being human.

That never left me.

THE BEDSIDE

Death is a lover of fear that threats to rob identities. I've watched it try — at bedsides, in living rooms, in the silence of families who didn't know what to say or ask or do. My clinical training has helped some. But what has helped even more was listening. Dialogue. The sharing of stories people carry quietly because we've built a world that distracts us from the telling.

We're all barely making it. Barely saying what we need to say. Barely loving enough before the gate closes.
LAST CALL

I almost missed a flight back to Dallas once (or twice…). They were calling my name over the speakers — "last call, last call, Waldo Rios."

I made it. Overheating. Barely. Settling into my seat it hit me — that's how most of us love. Running. Rushing. Not enough time.

This exists because of that barely.
THE THRESHOLD

It's where our heroes have written their stories. Where geniuses and philosophers have walked through.

From Cleopatra to your grandmother. From Einstein to your best friend. From "Who?" to "You."

The research is here. The clinical tools are here. But underneath all of it is one belief —

that loving one another well should be found long before our last call.

I am a hospice nurse practitioner. I am a hospice agency owner. A half musician. A believer in loving one another. A believer in sharing our stories. A bible believing Christian.

I am

Terminal2.org — Waldo Rios, NP