Have you ever taken your work home with you?

When people ask what I do for a living, I tell them I'm a public servant called a notary public, who serves the public and businesses properly execute their documents as a professional witness so they are accepted by a receiving agency and can be utilized for it's intended purpose. I specialize in trust delivery and estate planning work. What I don't always mention is how often this work takes me into hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and hospice centers, places where people are facing some of the hardest moments of their lives.

Sometimes, being a compassionate notary means going beyond the notarization itself.

It might mean offering postage stamps when the facility doesn't have any and a document needs to be mailed. Or dropping something at the post office because the signer has no way to get there themselves.

Sometimes it means staying a little longer—just to sit and listen—especially when someone has no family or friends nearby t...