RANDOLPH — Robert Sparadeo didn’t just bring a bike to his first-ever “Last Mile Bicycle Ride” Saturday. He also brought the meatballs.
Specifically, they were homemade meatballs stewed in tomato sauce and stuffed in sandwich buns, a recipe handed down to him by his late mother, Polly.
“I brought these in her memory, to carry on her work,” he said, gesturing to the pan of rapidly disappearing food as hungry bikers piled plates with his meatball sandwiches.
Sparadeo said his mother died recently and spent the last five days of her life in Gifford Medical Center’s end-of-life care program, where nurses and doctors regularly checked on her, made her comfortable and showed her “compassion,” he said.
Now, at the annual bike ride to support the Randolph hospital’s end-of-life programs, Sparadeo said he wanted to show his appreciation for how nurses and doctors treated his mother.
“I’m going to do everything I can for these guys, because they did everything for my mom,” Sparadeo said. “It’s a chance to thank them for something I never could thank them for before.”
Sparadeo was one of around 40 people who attended the bike ride by the Randolph Recreation Department on Saturday. Cyclists made donations to the hospital and then spent the morning riding in groups on a 12-mile gravel path or a 20-mile route on the road, ending the event with lunch that included pizza, fruit and meatball sandwiches.
The money raised by Saturday’s event — and by subsequent walking, motorcycle and running events next week — goes to support services offered by the hospital’s end-of-life program, Gifford spokeswoman Ashley Lincoln said.
She explained that specialists with the program try to honor any requests from patients in order to make them as comfortable as possible and ease their pain. Sometimes that means acupuncture, massage therapy or getting their nails done. The money pays goes to day-to-day necessities, too, like building a ramp to help a patient get inside their own home, or covering aspects of care that insurance might not.
“Because of gifts from events like this, we’re always able to say yes,” to patients, Lincoln said.
The event, which is in its 16th year, has “grown in a way beyond words, beyond expectation,” Lincoln said, adding that a lot of riders have no affiliation with Gifford and merely come to support the program.
That sense of community that comes from riders getting together to support a cause is not lost on Montpelier resident Nancy Reid, who works in hospice care in central Vermont. She said the event has given people a chance to be open about the end of life in a supportive, communal environment.
“I don’t think people talk enough about death and dying. It’s often too taboo to talk about,” she said. “But in this context of community and fitness … it shouldn’t be sad.”
Marc Fournier, a registered nurse at Gifford, had a similar perspective Saturday. When asked why he came to participate, Fournier grinned.
“It’s fun, No. 1,” he said. “And we get to hang out with people we love.”
Anna Merriman can be reached at amerriman@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.