Izzy had a good day today. I got up early and he and I took a short walk in the woods. He ate well, slept by my computer. He joined Maria in her Studio Barn for awhile and then curled up in his favorite spot behind a chair and slept, and is sleeping now. He was alert and moving around. We had an evening walk too. It was nice.

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Jeanine called me this morning. I remember her so well, and she called me to ask about Izzy. We saw her in Warren County, during a hospice visit. She was exhausted when I first met her. Her seven-year-old son Jimmy was lying on a couch in her living room, dying from a brain tumor. The social worker said she had not slept in weeks, sitting by her son’s side. She was a single mom, the father was not around. She was gaunt, her eyes hollow, swollen from crying. Day and night, she sat by Jimmy’s side, exhausted, and all she could say to me when I came – the social worker warned me about this –  was “I’m not doing enough, I’m not doing enough.” I wanted to shake her and ask her what she could possibly be doing that she wasn’t, but hospice training forbids that. You are there to listen, not alter reality.

Izzy came into the room with his intuitive eye and settled on the boy, who was sleeping, but who opened his eyes, looked at Izzy and made contact, smiled. Izzy came to the foot of the bed, looked at me, and I nodded and he jumped up onto the bed and began to move slowly along the boy’s side. Jimmy’s head was covered in bandages and he could not see clearly. He isn’t sleeping, said Jeanine, he isn’t resting. Izzy nuzzled his head under Jimmy’s outstretched hand and the child smiled, and said something I could not hear. In a few minutes, he was asleep. Jeanine was surprised, pleased, and she sat down in her big chair and her eyes closed and soon, she was asleep also. The only sound in the room was the oxygen pump gasping and thumping. It was the sound I most remember from hospice work with Izzy.

And so this is what happened. Once or twice a week Izzy and I came to the house and he would get up in bed next to Jimmy and Jeanine would have the only sleep she ever allowed herself to take, and if you did not think about it, it was the most peaceful and touching thing in the world to see. After awhile, she would explain, “if Izzy is here, I can rest.” Once in awhile, Jimmy spoke to Izzy and called out his name. One day we came to the house and there was no answer, and we understood what that meant, it was the worst part of being a hospice volunteer, when you showed up and nobody was home. Izzy and I came back to the farmhouse and Izzy barely moved for days. Somehow, he always knew.