Woman heartened by a random act of kindness

REGINA Bob Lauder used to go to his barber once a month.

As a man who prides himself on a clean-cut appearance, his regular haircuts and shaves were very important to him.

“Bob talks about, until just recently, the barber that he used to have in Regina. This is 40 years ago or more,” recalls his wife of 40 years, Dee.

“He and Bob had a good relationship. They’d go for coffee after he gave Bob a haircut and then he’d look at Bob and ... bring him back and set him in the chair and do a few more snips,” she said with a laugh.

Bob, 81, was admitted to Pasqua Hospital about three weeks ago. Unable to walk and struggling with dementia, heart failure and spinal stenosis, he is bound to his hospital bed.

“He does not like being there,” said Dee.

But thanks to the kindness of a stranger, for a little while, it wasn’t so bad. About two weeks after he was hospitalized Dee got an excited phone call from her husband.

“I just got a shave and a haircut,” he exclaimed.

The timing couldn’t have been better. Having recently taken his razor apart to try to fix it, he found it no longer worked and his hair was in great need of a wash and a cut. “From whom?” Dee asked him. “I don’t know, but he was a really nice guy and talked a lot,” said Bob. “I think I got a good haircut just like in the old days in Regina, but my hair wasn’t long enough to get one like that young guy.”

“That young guy” was a man named Kevin, the son of the patient in the bed next to Bob’s.

Bob noticed Kevin’s haircut when he was visiting his dad a few days earlier and had even asked Kevin to come closer so he could get a better look.

Dee later learned that it was Kevin who asked for permission to have his barber come to the hospital and help Bob out.

Little did he know that it was a much needed moment of “ordinary” during a difficult time for both Bob and Dee.

“I must confess, the day that I heard about the haircut and the shave I had just about reached the end,” said Dee.

She had called her daughter for help because she needed a break from the hospital visits and the challenges inherent in having a husband with dementia.

Bob and Dee met in 1975. She was part of the sailing club in Saskatoon. He was a member of the sailing club in Regina. Their paths crossed when Bob had to drop something off for the newsletter Dee was responsible for.

The rest, as they say, is history. They spent the summer sailing and later went into business together, running a sod farm just east of Craven. They married in 1978, the second marriage for both. In 1990, they moved to Gabriola Island in British Columbia.

But as Bob’s dementia and other ailments worsened, the couple decided to make the move back to Saskatchewan to be closer to their daughters. On Nov. 1, they moved into a retirement home, where Bob was still using a walker and attending meals in the dining room until about three weeks ago.

In a short amount of time, Dee has seen her husband and business partner of 40 years become less and less like himself.

The challenges are great and the toll heavy on them both.

Every time she visits, Bob asks Dee if he can go home with her and every time she has to tell him no, if you can’t walk, you can’t come home.

“He was in hospital for three days and he says ... I’m ready to die and I love you very much,” said Dee.

Dee must find a place that will be able to take care of Bob once he’s ready to leave the hospital, and now that she has had a break and a few good nights of sleep, she said she’s ready to get back at it.

She’s also extremely grateful to Kevin, whose last name she doesn’t know, but wishes she did so she could track him down and tell him for herself.

“Every so often you get an opportunity in life to help somebody and you hesitate because you think you’re interfering,” said Dee with tears in her eyes. “I can’t tell you how wonderful it was that Kevin got involved.”