ElderPet

Every workday, my job is to visit the dying and their families.  I am a hospice social worker.  I have a four footed partner who does more comforting with her soft ears and warm body than any words I could speak.

Scout and Hospice Client

The love of a dog is pure and without judgment.  As hospice workers we are expected to be accepting of the end of life.  It is our mission to make that end as physically, emotionally and spiritually comfortable as possible.  But we are human, and as humans there will always be a part of us that takes a step back from death.  A step back from looking death directly in the face and knowing that someday we may be in that bed, that frightened, that sick.

Dogs have no such issues.  Scout gives fearless unconditional love to every patient she visits.  She is not, in the secret parts of herself as I am, using energy to defend against her own inevitable end.  In that sense she is fully present.  She is not concerned with open wounds, bodies consumed by cancer or the emptiness of end stage Alzheimer’s. In the presence of all suffering she is the affirmation of total acceptance and love.  She happily climbs into hospital beds and lies among the oxygen tubing and morphine pumps to do her work.  The work of providing a brief respite from the sadness, anger and pain that humans often feel as their bodies decline.

Pat Coughlin, MSW