A Little Humor at Hospice

(Note: This blog post is by Michele St. Peter, whose husband, Don Ogle, was admitted to hospice care this week after 18 months of fighting lung cancer. Michele and Don are regulars of the early service.)

Yesterday, Tricia came to Tranquility to give us communion. Don drank his communion wine through a straw--in fact, he slurped up all the wine in the little chalice, and Tricia had to pour more for herself and for me.(I resolved to bring a bottle of non-communion wine back to Tranquility that afternoon.)

Tricia left shortly after that, but returned almost immediately to tell me there was a big dog in the hallway, "a St. Bernard or something." I said, "I'll bet it's our friend Cash." It was. Bernese Mountain dogs are similar to St. Bernards, and come from the same part of the world. Bernese are slightly smaller, according to our neighbor Carolyn Crockett, although Cash looks plenty big to me.(In case any of you are wondering, Cash is named after Johnny Cash.)

Cash and Carolyn were at Tranquility for their weekly visit. They were standing near the nurses' station, talking with a lady with a baby--the baby was waving his arms around and laughing at Cash. And Cash, who apparently has not seen a lot of babies, liked the kid, too.

The lady, in what I thought was a brave move, set the baby on the floor. I would say he is about six months old or so, crawling, but not walking. He started crawling and Cash immediately walked over to him and flattened him--in the nicest possible way--with one big paw. The baby took off again, laughing all the way, and Cash started to follow. Carolyn reeled him back in, telling him that the baby was not a new squeaky toy to play with.

So Cash was sitting next to Carolyn, watching the baby, who sat back on his little diapered behind and watched Cash. Cash woofed--he has a lovely, basso woof. And the baby barked back! They carried on a dialogue, while everyone in the vicinity roared with laughter. When I say everyone, I'm talking about a lot of people: nurses at the nurses' station, families hanging out in the visitors' room, doctor and nurses who were trying to have a staff meeting in a room adjacent to where we were standing.

The doctor came out, and Carolyn immediately started to apologize for the uproar. The doctor stopped her, and asked her to bring Cash into the staff meeting, to show a new staff member some of Cash's tricks. The favorite trick is apparently the Cheerios trick. Carolyn tells Cash to "down" with his front paws out. She places one Cheerio on each paw--through some direction of Carolyn's, Cash knows he is not to eat the Cheerios. So he sits and looks around, looking very cool and calm. Then Carolyn directs him to lick his lips, and he does it! Then she gives him permission to eat the Cheerios, and he scarfs them up.

Cash is a huge hit at the hospice. And it's nice to know that, in a place like Tranquility, where people are preparing to die, we can still have a really good communal belly laugh.

Thank you, Carolyn, and thank you, Cash.