The Widow Saunders Tree

February 14, 2008 – Sometimes, Izzy and I go underground, out of the Hospice program, into somebody’s life. It happened this week when we went to a nursing home to see a Hospice patient, and after we visited him, a nurse came over and asked if we would visit a woman who was severely depressed, and hadn’t smiled or come out of her room in some days.
  The nurse said Lee was in her 80’s, in pain and was alone and rarely visited. She was ill, but not “actively dying,” as the Hospice people say. Lee had become so lethargic the staff was concerned, and there was no family nearby to call. Our visits to nursing homes
have radically altered my views of these facilities, and of the people who live and work in them.
  I’ve driven by these places so many times, and never given much thought to the people who are inside. In a way, they are ghosts, part of the shunning our culture does of the dying and of their mistreatment.
I have been guilty of this myself. Working with Izzy has changed that, and also watching nurses and home staffers struggle to communicate with their patients.
  These patients, I am learning,  have lives, and spirits and friends and passions and all kinds of energy, even in the Alzheimer’s wing. It just reveals itself in different ways, ways Izzy can see but I can’t always. He is blind to age and disease, it doesn’t seem to matter to him and so these people, I think, avoided by much of the world, respond to him.
  The nurse took us all the way down the hall, and into a room which at first looked empty, save for a TV that was on, the volume way down. It was dim, and it was Izzy who saw Lee, a pale, tiny women sitting in a chair in the corner, a shock of white hair hanging over he forehead, and dressed in a blue gown with a bathrobe and slippers. Faded photographs of two children were on the dresser, and she barely looked up at me when I came into the room.
  The nurse told me that Lee had one child, who lived near New York City and came up on Sundays when she could. Otherwise, there was noone. I was impressed by this nurse, who went out of her way to think of Lee and to struggle to cheer her up, when noone would have noticed if she hadn’t bothered.
  Izzy made a beeline for her, and put his head on her knee, startling her. “Oh,” she said and she smiled.
The nurse clapped her hands. “Oh, Lee,” she said, “it is so great to see you smile.” Lee looked down at Izzy, and stroked his head, and he stared up at her. Her eyes were bright and blue. She did not seem to notice me. She and Izzy stared at each other for awhile.
  Then Lee laughed and also clapped her hands, and then leaned forward, and stroked Izzy for two or three minutes. “What a pretty dog,” she said softly, stroking his head. “What a nice dog.”
  Then Lee leaned back in her chair, and the smile was gone, but the nurse said she seemed much calmer. I couldn’t tell. We said goodnight, and we said we would be back.