My Dad – the Hospice Graduate…

Dad’s medical team gave him two weeks to live. The morphine was at his bedside, ready for use. Every good- bye was said; his affairs, all in order. Six weeks later, he was a hospice graduate. That was all five years ago now, and he continues to live independently, enjoying every day. I offer this brief glimpse into his miraculous story as a reminder of the need for humility when it comes to prognostication and for an acknowledgment of the limits of modern medical science. If I had born witness to it with my own eyes, I would not believe it…

At the end of January, 2020, just weeks before COVID-19 unleashed its wrath on the world, my 80-year-old father, Bob Zoosman, had a significant heart attack. He spent weeks in the hospital and endured a risky, life-saving quadruple bypass. Recovery from that trauma and learning to live with his permanently damaged heart’s ten percent ejection fraction neces- sitated that he spend six weeks in a rehab facility.

On the day of his discharge, I brought him to his new apart- ment at Bluebird Estates, an independent living facility in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts. When I took off his socks, I was shocked to see that his feet were as black as charcoal. His long-standing neuropathy in his feet—exacerbated by his surgery—had prevented him from feeling any pain associated with what had developed into a massive infection in both of his heels. His former rehab facility, inexcusably, had missed this malady entirely, apparently never looking at his bare feet. An immediate urgent medical evaluation determined that he had developed an extremely dangerous case of osteomyelitis in both of his heels. Dad was told he needed IV antibiotics in the hospital in order to survive. A longtime widower, having endured hell in foreign hospital environments for weeks and very much aware of the now terrifying reality of the COVID pandemic that was killing thousands of hospital patients, dad made the decision to decline this option. His medical team told him that this would lead to sepsis and death. According to the medical team, his prognosis without treatment was two weeks.

Dad considered his plight. He knew well the mitigating effects of morphine on pain. He had learned this when he took care of his dying wife, my mother, decades prior by ensuring that her doses of that drug were appropriate in her final weeks on home hospice after a grueling two-year cancer journey. And so, compos mentis, he stood by his decision and told his team—and me—that he was ready to go. As he said with a chuckle, this condition would serve as his “Achilles’ Heel.”

I, too, considered our plight. I absolutely loved my father and did not want to lose him. Still, having worked as a hospi- tal and hospice chaplain for years, I had seen the powerful gift that a family could provide when respecting the wishes of a loved one at the end of life. Agency mattered. And so, with a heavy heart, as his only child, health care proxy, and next of kin, I agreed to support his decision. I packed my mother’s old acoustic guitar—the instrument that I had used to accom- pany songs for countless dying patients over the years—and traveled from my Washington, DC, home and family to be with Dad for his last two weeks in this world. Dad immedi- ately stopped taking his upwards of 20 medications, most of which were for his heart. The morphine lay at his bedside ready for his use. The home hospice nursing team was locked and loaded, prepared for daily visits for wound dressings. Two pills of extra-strength Tylenol—Dad’s faithful go-to elixir—were the only medicine he was willing to take for some relatively minor, occasional stinging he felt in his heels.

For two weeks, I sang and played Dad’s favorite songs from the Jewish liturgy, Yiddish and secular folk songs with which my mother used to serenade us, and other popular hits from the ‘50s to the ‘90s. We held Zoom sessions and made phone calls with family and friends in which we exchanged emotional farewells. We rewatched some of his favorite shows. I interviewed him for his obituary, ensured that the burial plot was in order at our synagogue, and even made end- of-life donations to some of his favorite charities, such as the local chapter of the Jewish War Veterans. Since my father was in hospice and actively dying, Bluebird Estates made an exception to their Covid visitor policy and allowed me to stay by his side as a long-term guest during their lockdown.

On each Friday night during those fateful two weeks, after serenading Dad to bed with songs from the Jewish Sabbath service, I witnessed something I never had before. Dad—who was not on any medications other than the Tylenol—began sleepwalking and having vivid conversations with me in unfa- miliar and uncharacteristic whispered tones. He told me on one of these occasions that he was someone named Mordecai Kaplan. My Dad would not have known that this happened to be the same name as a famous twentieth-century rabbi and founder of what is now called Reconstructing Judaism. When I told Dad in that hypnotic state that Kaplan had lived well over a hundred years, he replied in his distant voice that he himself would not live quite that long. He then moved to the chair near his bed and fell back asleep. In both instances of this Shabbat Eve somnambulation, Dad had no recollection of it come the morning after, nor any idea how he had moved from his bed to the chair.

Meanwhile, as the home hospice nurses visited daily to change his bandages and clean his feet, they remarked how the wounds seemed to have stopped progressing. Two weeks passed. Then three. Four. A month. Incomprehensibly, the wounds started to look as if they were healing without any medicinal interventions—save the Tylenol (extra-strength, mind you). After about six weeks, Dad began walking regu- larly again. Eventually, the nursing team made one last visit with a cake and snacks and proclaimed Dad an official “hos- pice graduate.” He transitioned to supportive nursing care, and eventually graduated from that service, too. After a cardiac-related rehospitalization later in the year, Dad finally agreed to take his heart medications. He has remained on these faithfully these five years later—as well as the occa- sional Tylenol, for when the going gets particularly tough.

Dad now is the life of the party at Bluebird Estates, dancing regularly as one of only a handful of men among a throng of eligible widows. For years, that ominous morphine needle bottle remained at the bedside, an expired reminder of his pending expiration that never took place. A few weeks after his “graduation” from hospice, Dad received a note from the Jewish War Veterans expressing their gratitude for the dona- tion made in his memory and their heartfelt condolences on Dad’s passing (!)

As for me—the chaplain who “knew what to expect” when I went to see Dad off five years ago—I remain humbled by the whole experience. Most medical professionals I speak with admit that dad’s recovery makes no logical sense according to modern medical science. One doctor said it is possible—though rare—that an infected, necrotic bone can chip off and be absorbed into the body. The likelihood of this happening on both heels of the same person at the same time, however, is infinitesimal. I do not claim to fully understand how Dad healed. Perhaps it was just him being the lovable stubborn “heel” that he is—a man who insisted on doing it all his way. Perhaps there’s more than meets the eye to biofeedback through a family guitar and to the good vibes provided through familiar live music. (Or, perhaps I should invest in shares in extra-strength Tylenol.) I cannot say for sure what it was I experienced in those surreal interactions with Dad on those Friday nights when he talked with me through what seemed to be an otherworldly voice.

What I can say in full confidence—and faith—is that there indeed are mysteries in this life that not even science can claim to fully explain. When I share this story with patients and clients, I am careful to say that in no way do I advocate removing oneself from medications and ignoring medical advice. Indeed, medical science has quite literally been a life- saver for my family and me time and again, just as the cardiac medications have been for Dad in recent years. I offer the story rather as a reminder that science is only part of the won- der that is life. My experience has led this once confirmed agnostic chaplain, a paradox to be sure, to embrace an “and/ also” approach to the coexistence of science and that great mystery so many call “spirituality.” May we all be able to make space for both in our lives. . .

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NOTE: This article first appeared as“My Dad – The Hospice Graduate…” in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, Volume 00, Number 00, 2025.