A Dream Before Dying

It was the kind of May afternoon that makes you glad to be alive. Carol Siebert, 58, spent it sailing down a Hemet, Calif., highway in a red convertible, the wind lightly ruffling the hair in her blond wig. Beside her, in the driver's seat, was the car's owner, Sonia Mir, a woman Siebert had never met until that day.

But they connected like old friends, stopping for lunch and getting their nails done. Siebert carried a little pump of pain medication over her shoulder like a purse. Luckily the few flashes of pain she felt passed so quickly that Siebert was able to take a turn at the wheel. "When she called me afterward," says her daughter Michelle Hovey, "you would have thought she'd been to Hawaii and back."

Siebert, who died in July from breast cancer, had her last wish in life--that breezy convertible ride--granted by Dream Foundation. The nonprofit group headquartered in Santa Barbara, Calif., grants wishes to adults nationwide who have 12 months or less to live. Mir, a volunteer, understands what it means to have a dream fulfilled. The foundation gave her son Marcel a birthday bash with friends in formal gowns and dressy suits before he succumbed at age 23 to cancer in 2001. "He came alive for his birthday. He was so happy," Mir recalls.

Most people have heard of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, one of many groups that grant wishes to terminally ill children. Nonprofits that make the wishes of dying adults come true are far less common. The Association of Wish Granting Organizations reports that of its 21 members, only Dream Foundation specifically serves adults. With a projected 2006 budget of $2.8 million in cash and donated services, Dream Foundation expects to grant about 750 wishes this year to adults with a variety of terminal diseases.

Although rare, a few other national groups share similar missions. There's the Fairygodmother Foundation, based in Chicago, which will use its magic to conjure the last wishes of about 130 adults across the country this year. Making Memories Breast Cancer Foundation grants wishes to recipients with Stage 4 breast cancer; a doctor must confirm the recipient likely has only a year left.

Many dreamers ask for family trips so their loved ones can remember happy times together. Dee Appel, 61, had worked with Making Memories in Portland, Ore., for two years when she learned her breast cancer had returned and spread to her liver. During a local TV appearance in which Appel planned to promote a fund raiser, her colleagues surprised her by awarding her wish for a "grammy camp" in Colorado with her daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren. Appel invited the kids' other grandmother, who had lung cancer, to come along. The grandkids and their two grandmas--both "bald as billiards," Appel says--swam, fished, made s'mores together and rode a wagon drawn by Belgian draft horses.