Jim

Yesterday afternoon I found out that my friend Jim O'Hagan had passed away Monday morning. Last month a wrote about how I am a volunteer for Hospice and how I met this incredible man, Jim. I don't think I really knew how large the impact was going to be on me when he died. Of course, being a volunteer for something like Hospcie you know from the very beginning that you will get attached and that they will die, that is inevitable. However, I was not prepared for this. He seemed so alive and well---I thought for sure that they would have taken him off hospice within the next couple months. The last time I saw him was about 2 days before Christmas. He was very confused, he said that he knew he was Jim but he didn't know what that meant. He also told me that he was extremely lonely and that whenever I left he got really sad. That's definitely a tough thing to hear, knowing that you can't be with him all the time.

I know that I made an impact on Jim's life---half as much as the one he made on mine, but he made it very clear to me that I was very special to him. I feel honored to have been a part of his life at a crucial point. I know that he is much more comfortable and happy now --- he's probably up there chatting with Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman, he deserves that.