Cecil Stanbrough, who has lung cancer, is bathed by Carmen Moreno of Casa de la Luz at his home. Stanbrough has been a hospice patient since 2005 .

Photos by James Gregg / Arizona Daily Star

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When Cecil Stanbrough had a relapse of lung cancer in the fall of 2005, doctors at the Veterans Administration hospital in Tucson gave him six months to live, and Stanbrough decided to go home for end-of-life hospice care.

But that wasn't the end. The 79-year-old Air Force veteran has outlived those predictions by a full year, and Stanbrough and his wife, Charlotte, 77, have developed a close bond with caregivers from the Casa de La Luz Hospice, who visit him several times a week.

"They're terrific people. Terrific. First thing they do, they come in that door, 'How do you feel?' " says Cecil Stanbrough, who will turn 80 Friday.

Adds Charlotte: "They're our friends. We laugh. We have a lot of fun. We care about each other's families. They know all my problems, and they could do without that, but hey, they came and asked!"

The word "hospice," for some, conjures images of a place where the dying go in the final throes of a terminal disease. Though Casa de la Luz Hospice has a residential home on the Northwest Side and a nine-room inpatient unit at 5830 W. Fountains Ave., adjacent to Northwest Medical Center, most Casa patients — like Cecil Stanbrough — receive care in their own homes.

The emphasis of that care, says Dasa Schmidt, Casa's outreach coordinator, is on living, not dying.

"People just think we are about dying, rather than helping people to live until they die," Schmidt says. "If someone is in pain, there's no quality of life, and that is our No. 1 focus. And then from there, everything else: What can we do today? How can we make today a good day for you?"

To make each day better for patients, Casa de la Luz provides the services of doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers, spiritual counselors, trained volunteers and even musicians — all covered by Medicare.

But often families in end-of-life situations have needs that are not covered.

In 2000, the nonprofit Casa de la Luz Foundation was created to address those supplemental — but often dire — needs that fall outside Medicare coverage.

On Sunday, the foundation will have its annual fundraiser, an auction and fashion show called "To a Tea," at the Hacienda del Sol Guest Ranch Resort, 5601 N. Hacienda del Sol Road.

For the Stanbroughs, the foundation has already provided a lift chair worth about $1,000 that helps Cecil Stanbrough get up. It also bought the couple a washing machine, which Charlotte Stanbrough desperately needed.

"After a month or two, you want to see the guy in another shirt is what it boils down to," she quipped.

For other families, the foundation has paid for burials, cremations, funerals, airplane tickets, end-of-life wishes such as reunion parties and even mortgages and rent.

Even in the best of times, things haven't been easy for the Stanbroughs, who were married in 1948 in Clayton, Mo., and moved to Arizona in 1959. For a time Cecil Stanbrough leased a Chevron station in Douglas, but it went into debt, Charlotte said, because her husband was too softhearted to run a successful business.

Through the years, Cecil worked in service stations, specializing in brake repairs, and also as a security officer. Now they live on slim Social Security checks in a mobile home off West Ajo Way.

Cecil Stanbrough was first diagnosed with lung cancer in 1998. The cancer went into remission but appeared again in 2005.

Now he is extremely thin, his head completely bald from chemotherapy. He spends days in his lift chair, with a blanket over his knees and a wheezing oxygen concentrator — his "little buddy" — at his side, pumping oxygen through clear tubes into his nose.

When asked a question, he is as spare with words as his wife is chatty. He looks back on his disease and the challenges of his life with neither anger nor regret, calling his life "simple and good."

"I didn't always make the best money, but I had a job most of my life," he says. "I look at it like this: I've lived 79 good years. And I figure when the Lord wants me, that's when I'm gone. There's no use fighting it."

His wife, though, petitions for more time. "My prayer at night is: 'I'll take the time you give me, God.' If it's one night. Another year or two. I want him with me."