HotmailJon Katz writes of dogs, death and healing
Author shares how his pets inspired him to help others via hospice work
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WEST HEBRON, N.Y. - Jon Katz and companion Izzy, both wearing the photo IDs of hospice volunteers, are greeted brightly as they enter the dining room at Pleasant Valley Infirmary.
While Katz chats and jokes with caretakers and residents seated around tables, Izzy scans the room like a shepherd surveying his flock before sidling up to a white-haired woman in a wheelchair and placing his head on her knee.
“Izzy's my boyfriend,” says 96-year-old Marion McEachron, whose strong handshake reflects a lifetime of hard work on her farm in these Washington County hills. “He smiles at me. Didn't you see him laugh?”
The sleek, handsome border collie breaks into a broad, tongue-lolling grin as McEachron strokes his glossy neck. A nurse confides to Katz that McEachron, an Alzheimer's patient, was withdrawn earlier but her mood had clearly brightened with Izzy's calm presence.
Later, driving to his next stop with Izzy dozing on a quilt in the back seat, Katz talks about what brought him to hospice work — an experience he shares in his new book, “Izzy and Lenore: Two Dogs, an Unexpected Journey, and Me.”
“I was drawn to hospice work because I wanted to do something with my dogs that was more meaningful than some of the traditional dog-human activities, like sheepherding or even conventional therapy work,” Katz says.
A social worker from Washington County Hospice had come to one of Katz's book readings and talked to him about the need for volunteers and the possibility of bringing dogs into the experience.
“So I went into training with Izzy, and later with my Lab Lenore, and was greatly rewarded by the experience” Katz says. “I found it to be very rich, intimate and loving.”
At the same time Katz was considering volunteering for hospice, he was battling a case of depression that drained his energy and dampened his spirits. Friends and family advised him against hospice work, imagining that so much focus on death and dying could only make things worse.
Instead, it brought a degree of redemption.
“When I was feeling the lowest, I'd go do hospice work. I'd always feel better,” he says, adding that giving of oneself to others is therapeutic for a depressed person because it focuses attention outward instead of inward.
“Hospice work gives you tremendous perspective,” Katz says. “It made me want to use my time well, and being depressed is not a good use of time. You see people at the end of their lives and they're very conscious of how precious time is. They know what's important. They have a sense of humor. In a way, they're very free.”
Hospice work is the latest path in a continuing journey of mid-life adventure that began in 1999 when Katz fled life as a big-city journalist living in suburban New Jersey to the green hills 170 miles north in New York state.
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