I gave my mom a hope-opotamus, one that a client had given to me. It wasn’t a big hope-opotamus, in fact it was the smallest one in the herd. I wanted to give it to her so that we could talk about hope. I wanted her to have something to hold on to. I knew she loved stuffed animals. But I was afraid to give it to her. I chose the small one because I could hide it in my purse and decide not to give it to her.
The first thing she said when I gave it to her was: “What am I supposed to do with this?” The second thing she said, because she was still well enough to want to please me, after I had offered to take it away, or put it on the hospital window sill with her plants was: It isn’t very big. Maybe I will just hold on to it for a while.”
My mother could not get out of bed. On many days she could not even sit up. But she could hold that hope-opotamus, and hold it she did. She made a rule that it could not be placed out of her reach, and she enforced that rule in three hospitals. She proved that no doctor is too busy to hear a ten-minute lecture from a dying patient about the importance of hope and the symbols that represent it. She proved that nurses on their lunch break will run the length of a hospital to retrieve a hope-opotamus carelessly forgotten by a porter during a visit to a lab. She couldn’t ask to be cured, or even to be treated with dignity, but she could make the rules about the hope-opotamus. And so she used it to help her take charge of her life.
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