Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat - By David Dosa Page 0,48

hits home, when they realize they’re looking for someone who isn’t there anymore, the caregiver feels guilty for having been irritated.

“If only I could have had more patience or been more understanding with him!” family members say to me. “He wasn’t doing it on purpose.”

“So many people have trouble knowing exactly what to do,” I said to the Scheers, trying to relieve some of the burden. “Every caregiver experiences the same thing, the guilt associated with getting angry. It’s ultimately something you can’t possibly control.”

Robin nodded, but I doubted she heard anything I had said. Intellectually, people often know that there’s nothing else they can do for a parent or spouse with dementia, but it doesn’t make the guilt go away. She continued her story. “I think the worst thing is that even after he was in the nursing home, I had so much trouble getting into the frame of mind just to see him. I would go to see my father, the father who had raised me, and get nothing back in return. You don’t get feedback. I mean, how do you talk to someone who doesn’t respond?”

Once again, the question was rhetorical. Still, I tried to answer. “I guess you do the best you can,” I said. “There’s value in just being there, even if you don’t get the feedback you’re looking for.”

Joan reached over into her bag and pulled out a piece of paper. “I used to refer to this when my husband was alive and I would get angry or frustrated. It’s from Saturday, a novel by Ian McEwan. This is what going to the nursing home was like for me: ‘It’s like taking flowers to a graveside—the true business is with the past.’”

We talked for another thirty minutes, covering many aspects of Larry’s illness. I felt almost guilty about transitioning the conversation to address the real reason for my visit. Thankfully, when Oscar’s name came up the Scheer family didn’t seem to mind. For the first time since we had begun talking, Joan even smiled.

“You know,” Robin began, “we really thought Oscar had missed the boat with my father. He was in the final stages of dying and we still hadn’t seen him once. Not one visit.

“We had heard about his exploits in the past from others and we were really confused. To pass the time, my mother and I went looking for him and found him in the opposite hallway sitting with another patient. He looked real anxious. I remember my mother addressed Oscar and told him he was not doing his job. A little while after we returned to my father’s room, Oscar suddenly raced into the room as if the clock had just started to strike twelve.”

“Like Cinderella racing out of the ball,” Joan added.

“It was only later that we learned another patient was dying on the other side of the unit,” Robin said. “Oscar stayed with the other patient until he was gone. Then he raced over!”

A look of awe had fallen over Robin’s face. Across the table, Joan seemed to share in the amazement of what they had witnessed.

“Oscar allowed me to pick him up briefly and then jumped off my lap and went right over to Dad. A few hours later, my father died.”

Robin started to laugh. “Funny thing is that an hour or so before my father died, a hospice nurse came in to do her assessment. When she was finished, she suggested that we take a break. ‘Your father still has time,’ she told us. Mom and I both looked at each other, but neither of us wanted to go. We figured we should take our cue from Oscar. It was a good thing, too, because he was right. Had Oscar not been there at the end, we might have listened to the nurse and missed being there when he died.”

“It’s not that we trusted the cat more than the nurse,” Joan said. “Not, exactly. It was…well, there was just something about Oscar. He seemed so convinced of what he was doing. He was so clear in his intention and his dedication.”

Robin summed it up: “This beautiful creature was sending us a sign. It would have been wrong to ignore it.”

“A DOCTOR CAN GIVE you a label but it’s not about that. There’s nothing in the name. You want to know how to deal with the disease, what it’s going to do to you.”

Joan’s words echoed in my mind as I drove home. I suppose after Robin’s