Joy Unleashed

by Jean Baur

  There were a few couples who shared a room—together in this last phase. Last place. One couple interacted actively with each other, while another seemed like two ships in separate oceans. The husband of this couple, Jeff, was a riot. He loved the dogs and made little squealing sounds when we walked through the door. Mostly his wife, on the other side of the room, ignored us. One of their kids or grandkids had made a huge collage of photos of them posted on the wall. I looked at them—getting married, holding babies, having family cook-outs, and it didn’t seem possible that these people, these two old people in this room, were related to those vibrant images.

  Jeff said things like, “Oh, look at you!” and loved to run his hand up and down the dogs’ backs, ruffling their fur. Shelby stood still, enjoying the attention. Bella backed up but then put her paws up on his lap if I lured her with a treat. He giggled. He made sounds that were more dog than English. His face was young and happy for those brief moments. Deb did a wicked imitation of him that cracked me up, but she never did it in his room. One day, while Jeff was having his love fest with the dogs, we heard his wife say in a clear voice, “She’s backing away.”

  I turned to look at her and saw that she was watching Bella with her husband.

  “Yes,” I told her. “You’re right. She’s shy.”

  “She backed away,” she repeated.

  “Doesn’t like to be touched on the head,” I added.

  “Look at that,” she said with real interest. “Nice dogs.”

  Deb added, “Yes, they are.”

  “See you next week,” I told both of them. “Take care.”

  She nodded and smiled, Jeff waved.

  Out in the hall, Deb looked at me. “Wow, that was a surprise.”

  “And we thought she didn’t respond to the dogs.”

  It was impossible not to make judgments, not to focus on the ones who gave us the most feedback. We tried hard to include everyone, but some turned us away, others were too trapped by pain or by what was happening to them to react, and as we’d just learned from Jeff’s wife, sometimes our impressions were wrong.

  We followed our dogs down the hallway, in awe of the doors they opened. Endlessly surprised by the things they could do.

  Other couples didn’t live together but still spent a lot of time with each other. Our favorite was Mary. She had pale white skin, gray hair, and a loud voice because she was hard of hearing. Her husband, Alphonse, was almost always visiting, sitting on a chair beside her bed and holding her hand. I loved this. It was sort of like they were teenagers only they were both in their eighties or nineties.

  On one visit when there was music on the TV, I said to Alphonse, “Doesn’t this make you want to dance?”

  And a huge smile burst across his face and he told me, “Mary was a great dancer. She loved it. We’d go out every chance we got and dance until we couldn’t stand up.”

  I looked at her, barely able to sit up in her bed, and imagined her in a brightly colored dress, stockings, heels, swing dancing the night away. I hoped she had those memories. I hoped her heart was still dancing.

  Bella put her feet up on the edge of Mary’s bed. Mary’s eyebrows shot up and she said, “Oh, look!” And Alphonse grinned and said that the dogs were here.

  “She’s so … and the other one is, too.”

  She looked from Bella to Shelby.

  “Yes,” I told her. “They came to visit you.”

  Bella hopped down when treats were no longer being offered. Mary followed her with her eyes while her roommate, Barbara, smiled and nodded. Her wall was covered with pictures of horses and her bedspread had a collage of colts running in a field. She wore dark glasses so we never saw her eyes. Her TV was blaring, as was Mary’s, but behind all the chatter was quiet. It was a safe place to be. The pale winter sun slanted in the window, the colts raced, and Mary was hand-in-hand with her husband of fifty-eight years. No one was in a hurry.

  Months later, a new patient moved into the room right before the dining room. Deb and I hesitated, as there was no name posted outside the room. We could see it was a man, but not much else. He looked like a mummy tightly wrapped in blankets.

  Deb looked at me with her eyebrows up and I nodded. We’d give it a try. We approached the bed slowly, and I asked in a soft voice, “Would you like to see the dogs?”

  A bruised and swollen face emerged from the blankets and we saw a slight nod. Deb told him the names of the dogs and his eyes followed them. We didn’t dare get the dogs too close, as he’d obviously fallen or somehow had a bad injury. His mouth opened and he said, “Mary.”’

  I jumped back as if hit by an electric current. It was Alphonse.

  Deb didn’t believe it, but I knew it was him.

  “Oh, my God, Alphonse. What happened to you?”

  “Fell,” he said simply, conserving his energy.

  “We just saw Mary and she’s fine, but of course she misses you.”

  He shook his head.

  Deb added, “We’ll tell her we saw you.”

  He nodded.

  We told him we’d visit every week, and we did until about a month later, when we were told that he had died. He didn’t make it.

  “What will Mary do?” I asked Deb.

  “I don’t know.”

  We were afraid to go into her room, but made ourselves do it. She wasn’t interested in the dogs, but told Deb and me, “My husband died.”

  I took her hand and told her how sorry I was. Deb reminded her that we visited Alphonse every week and told her what a wonderful husband he was.

  “He’ll be here tomorrow,” she said in a strong voice. A certain voice.

  “Oh?” I said, not sure where this was going.

  “He had errands today, but I’ll see him tomorrow.”

  And as we left the room, I said quietly to myself, “Yes, you will. You certainly will.”

  Chapter 29

  LEGACY FROM ANGUS

  Winter 2014

  Stonington, Connecticut

  It was a winter of snow, swirling winds, and cold. But I loved it. My son gave me snow pants for Christmas so I could bundle up like a little kid and stay warm. When Deb and I had started going to The Starfish Home with the dogs a year and a half earlier, she was also going to a hospital in Rhode Island. But then she decided it would be more fun to go to the hospital in New London where Bella and I went. Once she got her paperwork in order, we met at the volunteer office, Deb in her brand new blue jacket. I watched Bella and Shelby walk close to each other while Deb and I caught up. We were a pack—a unit that was more than the sum of its parts.

  As we headed down one of the echoing hallways, we heard a voice. A clear, loud voice that said, “I see dogs. Dogs are in the hospital.”

  We looked around, but the hallway was empty. We kept walking and the voice said, “I’m so glad dogs are here today.”

  Now Deb and I were smiling, although we still didn’t know who was talking. As we rounded a corner, we saw a man about our age waiting for us.

  “Well, here you are. I was pretty sure I heard their tags jangling and figured it had to be dogs!”

  Deb and I nodded while he gave them a pat.

  “Therapy dogs?” he asked, while Shelby leaned up against his legs.

  “Yes,” said Deb.

  “Bless you,” he said. “Oh dear,” he added. “My manners. I’m a chaplain, a Jewish chaplain, and I can’t tell you what these animals do. How wonderful they are.”

  “We know,” I added, grinning at him, thinking that his job was so much harder, as he has to do it alone.

  Deb said, “When we heard your voice it was like the Wizard of Oz!”

  He laughed and told us to keep up the good work. And then he was off, while Deb and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

  L&M hospital had built a new facility for cancer patients nearby. It was beautiful with Zen gardens outside, large glass windows, plants and flowers everywhere, even a basket with hand-knitted hats, free for any of the
patients. To volunteer there we had to wear beige jackets and had to have an additional blood test to make sure we wouldn’t endanger any of the patients. Radiation was on the ground floor. The waiting room and the chemo suites where we could visit were on the second floor.

  On our first time there, a nurse asked us to go into a private room where a blind patient was receiving chemo. I knocked on the door and when she said “Come in,” we walked over to her bed and I told her that Deb and I and our two dogs were here to visit.

  “Oh, I love dogs.”

  I noticed she had an accent and asked her where she was from.

  “Puerto Rico.”

  “Just like Bella,” I told her, and gave her the bland version of Bella’s story, leaving out the Dead Dog Beach part.

  She and I chatted in Spanish for a bit, my vocabulary making this a simple exchange. As we talked, I watched her face and it was amazing, like reading a book, I could see moods and colors crossing her face. We learned she used to have a dog but that it had died. She told us about how she learned to cook without being able to see. And she had an assistant who came in a few times a week to help her with the things she couldn’t do.

  What I loved about this woman was that she didn’t feel sorry for herself. She seemed at peace with blindness, cancer, whatever was thrown at her. Shelby got close enough to her bed that she could pet her, and Bella had a turn, too, with her front paws up on the side of her bed. As we said good-bye, I felt as though I was leaving a party, a wonderful, short party where people connected and cared about each other.

  In reading studies about how therapy dogs worked, it was interesting that long visits weren’t necessary. Short was fine as long as the teams were attentive and caring. I wondered what picture this woman had of the two dogs. How—from the texture of their fur and the way they moved and smelled, the sound of their nails on the floor—she created an image of the whole dog.

  Deb could only join us once in a while, and as Bella and I visited by ourselves more often, I began to notice something about the cancer patients: they seemed to fall into categories. There were the fighters who were going to beat this thing no matter what it took. Even in pain, they seemed optimistic. They looked forward. They could imagine themselves not ill. Then there were ones who accepted this illness in a spiritual way—as part of life, part of a mystery. They didn’t ask why, didn’t complain, just quietly worked through it. They were polite to the staff and thanked us for visiting. And as one woman said to me, “I’m covered in prayer,” and it was so real, I felt I could see it.

  Then there were those who were afraid, whose fear was palpable. Present. The dogs were a quick distraction, but didn’t touch it, didn’t take it away. They’d been invaded, their bodies were attacking themselves. They were going to die. Still, others found a kind of dark humor—they made jokes about the chemo, about glowing in the dark from radiation, and their laughter freed them, even if only for a moment. And some were angry. Really ticked off.

  I got a request from the volunteer coordinator to visit a man named Joe at the Cancer Center. He was there every Tuesday morning and had asked for a dog to visit. In the lobby, I signed in, walked upstairs with Bella, visited with a few patients who were in the large waiting area with their families, and then found Joe. He looked to me to be in his mid to late sixties. Just like me.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m Jean and this is Bella. I heard you wanted a visit from a dog.”

  His face was expressionless. He didn’t react to Bella. His wife sat off to the side.

  “What kind of dog is she?” he asked.

  “A mix. Mostly lab, but whippet, terrier too. She’s a rescue.”

  He wasn’t interested in her story.

  “Would you like to give her a treat?”

  A slight nod. I put one in his hand and Bella put her front paws up on the edge of his recliner and took the treat from his hand. We chatted for a few minutes and I asked him if he’d like us to come back.

  “Okay,” he said with no enthusiasm.

  After a few weeks of weekly visits, Joe said to me, “This is poison.”

  I hesitated, not sure what to say.

  “I’m here getting poisoned, so if the cancer doesn’t kill me, the drugs will.”

  I looked at the clear tube connected to the port in his chest. His wife had her head buried in a book.

  “But isn’t this supposed to give you a chance?” I asked, breaking the rules about asking patients about their health.

  He busted out laughing, a harsh sound with no joy in it. “That’s what they say. You can believe what you want.”

  I didn’t know what to believe, but had the feeling that if he thought this would kill him, it probably would. We saw him for a few more weeks and then his schedule changed and he didn’t ask for any more visits from a dog.

  Other patients were at a crossroads, their lives divided into two distinct sections: before cancer and after cancer. They changed. They lost parts of themselves but became more outspoken. This seemed to be what had happened to my best friend from college, Nancy.

  The nightmare had come true. Her mother died of melanoma in her early fifties, and Nancy, in her late sixties, received the diagnosis that she had breast cancer. She didn’t tell me until she had started chemo.

  “Oh, my God,” I said, stunned, saddened, afraid for her.

  “I’m going to beat it,” she told me.

  The doctors gave her an 88 percent chance of survival. I knew that was hopeful, but I couldn’t help thinking about the 12 percent. The what ifs.

  We talked on the phone and I found out that her life now revolved around her treatments. There were endless doctor visits, trips to New York City, studies, specialists, hours and hours of chemo. It was exhausting. No, it was worse than that. It was counter-intuitive. Chemo was an invasion, poison, something harmful that was one of the few weapons in this war. And it was cumulative. So week one, Nancy thought it wasn’t so bad, but by week three or four, she’d gotten sores in her mouth, couldn’t sleep because of night panics, a port in her chest that never stopped hurting, and later on, when she was further into her treatment, her husband had to give her shots in the stomach twice a day because of a blood clot. And then the steroids, which were necessary to reduce inflammation, put her on an emotional roller coaster. She cried at the drop of a hat.

  But she didn’t tell me this then. She kept it to herself, just the way my cousin Linda did. And when I asked Nancy why, why she couldn’t tell me then what she was going through, she said simply, “The sick live in a different world. A world so separate, so cut off, that there are no phone lines, no communication between them.”

  I was stunned, but believed she was right. Back when Nancy started her treatment, I asked a neighbor, who had survived brain cancer, for advice. I wanted her ideas about how I could best support Nancy through this ordeal.

  “Someone gave me a shoe box with gifts in it—little things like hand lotion, a pen, chapstick. And there were notes in it too. Inspirational sayings. So when I had a really bad day, when the pain got to me, I’d pull out the box and open something.”

  “Oh,” I had replied. “I love that.”

  That gave me a task. I had kept a clear, Lucite paint bucket that Nancy had given me my birthday gift in a few years back, and for several weeks, I filled it with treats. I found a website that sold headgear for cancer patients and bought a soft red head-covering for when her hair fell out. I added notes, being careful not to sound too upbeat, as I suspected that could be really annoying. When it was full, I wrote “Nancy’s recovery bucket” on it and mailed it to her. She loved it. I suspected she opened most of the gifts at once, but I didn’t ask, as it was hers and she could do whatever she wanted with it.

  She endured, didn’t complain, and was finally in remission. I thought this was good, the worst was over, and we could get on with things. In one of our phone calls, I asked Nancy if she and her husband, Bill, would like to visit us. There was a long pause.

  “So
mething wrong?” I asked.

  “Yes, in fact there is. I can’t do things on your terms anymore.”

  Now I was stunned. What was she talking about?

  “What?”

  “You want things your way. You expect me to go along, but I can’t. I’m not that person anymore.”

  I felt heat traveling to my face and a knee-jerk reaction to hit back. To hurt because I’d been hurt.

  “I don’t get that,” I had said as quietly as I could.

  “That’s right. You don’t.”

  “I’ve got to go. We’ll talk again soon.” And I had hung up the phone.

  Weeks went by and I replayed this conversation over and over. What was her problem? Why was she striking out at me, her oldest and best friend?

  I sent her a card. We chatted a few times. But we were cautious strangers, not friends. Not friends of forty years. Not the friends who met in college and moved to New York City about the same time.

  But somehow, we kept the door open a crack. The ice started to melt. Friendship and our long history won out. And I figured out that I needed to make the effort to understand who she was now. I offered to visit her. She lived on Long Island, so on a beautiful June summer day, I took the ferry from New London to Orient Point. I was nervous. This was either going to be a really good way for us to reconnect, or it was going to be awful.

  By mistake, she went to a different ferry terminal and it took almost two hours before she arrived to pick me up. But I didn’t mind. I sat by the water, bought a cup of tea from a concession stand, and waited. Without realizing it, I put myself into that slow and open place that I had discovered from my work with Bella. We had a good weekend together, and she told me about what she went through, about the pain and the fear, and about how she calculated life differently now; it was more like standing on something that could give way at any moment instead of solid ground. I saw the courage it took to live this way, and we became better friends than ever.