I could hear him coming down the hall with his walker. His wife was on twice a day visits, and I was helping for the weekend.
I started on Friday evening, and planned to visit each day at 9am and 6pm. I don’t like running twice a day visits very close together. I just don’t feel like a short time between visits provides the kind of support a family needs.
Anyway, this was Sunday morning, and to this point, her husband had not said anything to me or entered the room.
I saw the walker first, and knew it was him. He poked his head into the room and looked around the corner at me. I was sitting in a chair up agains the wall next to the door.
He started the conversation.
”We are getting closer to the end, aren’t we?”
She had been unresponsive since my first visit on Friday night. This was a sign that she was days from the end.
“Yeah,” I responded, ”It won’t be much longer.”
“She looks comfortable to me. How much longer do you think?”
“I really can’t say. Everyone is just very different,” I responded.
He entered the room and sat down next to me. He started to share his life with me..
“I’ve owned a barber shop here in town for 40 years. For many of those years I cut hair for the local army base. Most of the men would bring a picture of their sargent and tell me to cut their hair exactly like his. He had a flat top. That’s the hardest haircut to do.”
He went on to explain the challenges of trying to give someone a flat top.
“You have to cut the sides so much longer than the top for all the hair to hit at the same point above the head. Every head was just so different. Those men would line up outside of my shop, and I would be cutting flat tops all day long.”
I love hearing stories like this. I sat and relaxed, and let this gentle man share his life with me.
After several minutes he looked at me and said, ”I guess hospice is like haircuts. No two people are the same. Everyone is just a little bit different and needs some kind of special touch and consideration.
After about half an hour, he got up, grabbed his walker and slowly returned to the living room to be with the rest of his family.
I don’t know if hospice is really like haircuts. What I do know is that for this kind man, on the day he was going to lose his wife, hospice needed to be like haircuts.
