Sherry Flint stands in the kitchen at Inn Along the Way in Damariscotta. Overhearing guests “laughing and connecting” over shared meals as she works in the kitchen, Flint said, warms her heart. “All of a sudden, you know, it’s more — it’s the richness and fullness of life,” she said. “That’s pretty amazing.” (Molly Rains photo)
It is by facing up to what can be the hardest parts of life, said Sherry Flint of Damariscotta, that one uncovers what matters the most.
“What’s real and what’s true isn’t always glamorous, and it isn’t always beautiful in the ways that we think of beauty, but it really is the best of it,” Flint said on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 24, in a brightly wallpapered room at Damariscotta’s Inn Along the Way.
As founder and board chair of the nonprofit, Flint spends much of her time on the campus, located at the former Chapman Farm. Every day at the inn, there is food to prepare, volunteers and visitors to hug hello, and discussion groups and workshops to help orchestrate.
Flint is rarely still, however, she said, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I’m just compelled to do this. I couldn’t not,” Flint said.
The mission of Inn Along the Way, said Flint, is to foster community and provide respite for older adults, caregivers, and anyone else who may need it. Visitors stay in the inn’s cozy rooms or simply stop in for a few hours at a time to attend one of the community meals, support groups, workshops, and more that Flint and her team of volunteers regularly host at the facility.
The Inn Along the Way community is multigenerational and open to all, but Flint is especially passionate about creating an open, honest, and welcoming environment for older adults and caregivers in which living, aging, and dying can all be approached with honesty and in community.
That Flint would find her calling working with older adults, she said, wasn’t necessarily a turn of events she always saw coming. She grew up as the oldest of four siblings in a family that moved around extensively. Flint’s father, a chemical engineer who worked for Quaker Oats and who himself grew up in “a farm family of nine,” wanted his children to have a variety of life experiences, Flint recalled.
“He liked the idea of giving us adventures,” she said.
Flint recalled when she was a teenager, her mother, an artist, would drive her back and forth to a rural elder care facility in Illinois to volunteer. At the time, Flint was attending high school in the suburbs of Chicago. As a teenager, Flint was not particularly interested in the work, though she noted that she has always gotten along with individuals of all ages.
It wasn’t until decades later, when Flint’s grandmother neared the end of her life, that Flint once again was confronted with the realities of aging and death. This time, she said, the experience affected her differently.
“My grandmother made me her point person when she was dying,” Flint explained. “That was my first introduction to hospice.”
While supporting her grandmother, Flint realized that the end of life is a unique and deeply special time when many of the superficial, false parts of our personalities and lives finally fall away. To bear witness to the deeper truth that remains — Flint often refers to this as “what’s real and what’s true” — is, she said, a privilege like no other.
“In hospice, you can really do the deep dive with people … and companion them in some of the most amazing terrains of their life. What an honor that is,” Flint said.
After her grandmother passed away, Flint decided to enroll in hospice volunteer training. Not intending to actually become a volunteer, Flint said she had simply hoped to learn more about death and dying.
“I said to Daphne (Stern, the training instructor and a bereavement counselor at Miles Home Health and Hospice), ‘I’d love to take the training, but I’ll never volunteer,’” Flint said.
That prediction was quickly proven untrue. Two weeks into the training, Flint said, “I was asking, ‘where do I sign up?’”
Once she achieved her hospice volunteer certification, Flint found that friends and family began to call on her for her knowledge about and comfort around death. Flint began sitting bedside vigils for dying people, accompanying friends and family — including both of her parents and her longtime best friend — through the end of their lives.
Companioning loved ones as they enter uncharted waters, Flint said, has brought a new dimension to her relationships.
Aptly for someone who has witnessed the end of life many times over, Flint does not shy away from discussing death. In fact, she said, she encourages visitors to Inn Along the Way to discuss it openly.
“I mean, it’s a farm, for heaven’s sake, animals are going to die, and people are going to die,” Flint said, expressing her hope that open discussions of death will become more “normalized” in the future, both at Inn Along the Way and elsewhere.
When being honest about the realities of death and dying, she continued, “we live richer, fuller, more human lives.”
When it comes to confronting mortality, “I don’t think everyone needs to deep dive,” Flint said. “But I do think that (being open and honest about death) offers people the opportunity to assess for themselves what is important and what matters.”
For Flint, what is important and what matters, lately, is her work at Inn Along the Way and her connections with community members, friends, and family. Flint identified her husband, Sandy Flint, as her “biggest supporter;” he has encouraged her plans for Inn Along the Way ever since she first shared her idea for the organization.
Since filing for 501(c)(3) status in 2014, the inn has come a long way. Flint sees more than 100 people come through the doors to volunteer each year, as well as a continuous procession of visitors passing through to take advantage of the open, accepting environment that the inn offers.
Eventually, Flint hopes to construct 12 residential homes on the property, which she intends to rent on a sliding scale to older adults seeking community.
All of this, Flint says, is part of what she calls “the great symbiotic ecosystem of love and grace.”
“To be privy to that, to be the gardener … beyond belief, it’s special,” she said.
(Do you have a suggestion for a “Characters of the County” subject? Email info@lcnme.com with the subject line “Characters of the County.”)
