‘Maybe I’m meant to take care of all these kids in heaven’: Hospice nurse Erin Batton Bull dies at 44

When doctors first told Erin Batton Bull she had Stage 4 breast cancer, she turned to her mother and said she had just one regret.

“I have lived life to the fullest. I’ve become a mom. I have the best friends. I never missed a day with my children,” Bull recalled in May. “But I just want more time with my kids.”

From the moment Bull was diagnosed in 2024, she pursued aggressive treatments while trying to savor every moment with her two young sons and the families she cared for as a pediatric hospice nurse.

“Every day that I’m here, I’m grateful,” Bull told The Banner in May.

Bull died Sunday, a little more than two years after her diagnosis. Her tumors had begun to grow in May and she suffered a heart attack after trying a potent chemotherapy, her mother, Grace Batton, said.

“She was an angel on Earth, beloved by so many people,” Batton said. “That’s just the way she was born.”

The former Erin Batton was born in 1982, the eldest of three children raised in Jacksonville. Her parents owned a home-building company, F.C. Batton & Son Inc.

“She’s always been my second mom,” said her sister, Holly Batton Murphy, who is seven years younger.

After graduating from Dulaney High School, Pennsylvania State University and the Johns Hopkins University, Bull moved to San Diego to care for newborns in a neonatal intensive care unit.

She was struck by the sense that a hospital did not always provide a comfortable place for families to hold their children as life slipped away.

After marrying and moving back to the Baltimore area in 2013, she approached the leadership of Gilchrist hospice in Towson and said she wanted to work with dying children and their families.

“I wanted to get involved in hospice because I thought we could do it better,” Bull said. “There has to be a better way to allow the worst thing to happen — your child to die — in a less hospitalized environment.”

It was a pivotal time in pediatric hospice. The passage of the 2010 Affordable Care Act enabled families to permit children to receive palliative care while still undergoing chemotherapy and experimental treatments.

As Gilchrist expanded its pediatric program, Bull became a face of the organization, explaining the possibilities of hospice care for children in panel discussions and media interviews.

But Bull most cherished the work of tending to her young patients and their families. She held the hands of hundreds of dying children, discussed their prognoses in age-appropriate terms and listened to their hopes and fears.

“From day one, it was like she knew us,” said Annie Akras, whose 4-year-old daughter, Carmen, has a rare degenerative disease. “She immediately felt like an old friend.

“Sometimes she and I would have a really nice, deep conversation, and sometimes she would just sit and hold Carmen’s hand,” Akras said. “She had this very calm way of observing what was going on.”

Outside of her work, Bull was a devoted mother to sons Carson, 9, and Avery, 8, helping them with homework, accompanying them to sports practice and instructing them in the Christian faith that was an essential part of her worldview.

“They were the light of her life,” Grace Batton said.

After Bull’s diagnosis, she strove to cherish small moments with her boys, driving them to school or fixing them spaghetti in their Glen Arm home.

“I try to consciously be present with them, more than I think I ever was, to really listen to them, to really engage with them,” Bull said in May.

“I wish I had the opportunity to travel with them, to check off some bucket list items,” she said. “But we don’t need to travel someplace to make memories.”

Bull’s friends rallied around her after her diagnosis, bringing meals, entertaining her sons and helping to organize fundraisers.

Lizzy Hall, an artist and graphic designer whom Bull met when their sons attended preschool together, created stickers that said, “Her fight is our fight,” which Bull’s many friends proudly displayed.

“She brought so many people together,” Hall said. “She made all of us want to be better at being a mother and being a friend. We just need to remember every amazing piece of her and try to embody that to everybody around us.”

Bull, who separated from her husband late last year, frequently brought her children with her to ChurchONE, the nondenominational congregation in Towson where she was a member. She and the boys also left small figurines of Jesus and Mary around to remind others of God’s presence.

“I find them all over the house, and they remind me of her,” Akras said.

After doctors controlled the growth of Bull’s tumors in 2024, she returned to work with an even deeper empathy for the families she cared for.

“They give me inspiration because I know exactly what they’re going through,” Bull said.

Bull did not discuss her diagnosis with her patients and their families because she didn’t want them to worry about her. “I just quietly move along and do my work and hope that I’m giving better care now than I ever have,” she said.

Privately, Bull wondered if she would one day continue to care for her patients when their lives on Earth had ended.

“I feel like I’ve been called to do this work by God,” she said. ”Maybe I’m meant to take care of all these kids in heaven some day."

A celebration of Bull’s life will be held at ChurchONE in September, Batton said. Details are being finalized.

This article has been updated.

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