SABATTUS – Bob Morin misses the feeling of hot water hitting his head and falling over his face. It’s been months since the 75-year-old retired millworker has been strong enough to take a shower.

“I’d love to get in there,” he said. “But I shake too much. I’m afraid I’d fall right down.”

These days, Morin sits over a paper sheet on his bed while a health aide from Androscoggin Home Care & Hospice washes him with a warm cloth.

Health aide Steve Rogers knows nothing compares to a hot shower.

But the 37-year-old nursing assistant has found other ways to help Morin close his eyes, relax and forget about the fact that his heart and lungs are shutting down.

“This is his favorite part,” Rogers said, as he placed a steamy cloth over Morin’s head.

Morin sighed. He knew what was coming next.

Rogers grabbed a bottle of baby oil from the selection of products on the bed. He squirted some in his palm, rubbed his hands together and massaged Morin’s scalp.

“Now, that’s a shampoo,” Morin said, his eyes still closed.

Hard at first

Rogers is one of about five aides who share the job of caring for Morin. Their daily visits are one of several services that became available to Morin under his Medicare benefits when he decided in March 2003 to sign up with Androscoggin Home Care & Hospice.

At first, Morin was reluctant. He wasn’t sure he wanted someone else washing his body, shaving his face, helping him get dressed.

He decided to start slowly by having an aide visit three days a week. Rogers was the first to come.

“It was kinda hard the first time,” Morin said. “I was shaking because I was nervous.”

Morin wasn’t the only one on edge. It was Rogers’ first time, too.

A former postman in England who got a job with hospice after caring for his own wife, who died of cancer at age 27, Rogers didn’t want to say the wrong thing. He was afraid he would talk too much. Or too little.

“Building relationships is the biggest part of my job,” Rogers said.

It is also the part he enjoys the most, the thing he missed most during the 13 years he delivered mail for a living.

“There was very little job satisfaction. Nobody wants their bills and stuff,” he said.

Love and death

Rogers was living with his dog, cat and two ferrets in Dorset, England, when he met a woman from Auburn on the Internet. He visited her in August 2000, then came back three months later to propose.

The couple got married that December. A month later, Kori Rogers found out that she had breast cancer.

“I just slipped into a mode of caring. I didn’t feel sorry for myself or anything like that. There was no time,” Rogers said.

He learned how to clean the wounds from his wife’s mastectomy and how to administer her daily injections. After the cancer spread to her brain and she was too weak to get ready on her own, he bathed and dressed her.

Kori thanked him every time. Then, one day, she made him promise that he would get a job working with people who had cancer and other terminal illnesses.

“I knew I was helping, but I always felt grateful to her,” Rogers said. “I was the ultimate bachelor, about to become one crotchety old man.”

You never forget’

Rogers got his license to become a certified nursing assistant while his wife was still alive. He was working at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center when she died in February 2003.

A co-worker who knew about the promise he’d made to his wife saw a help-wanted ad for Androscoggin Home Care & Hospice and convinced him to apply.

During Rogers’ interview at the Lewiston-based agency, one of the supervisors asked if he was ready to work with people who were dying, given the recent loss of his wife.

Rogers gave a good argument.

“I hate the phrase Get over something’ or Move on,'” he said. “You never forget. You never move on. I don’t want to get over that stuff. It stays with you. It makes me who I am.”

Every afternoon, Rogers gets a list of five or six patients he’ll visit the next day. The names on the list change day to day, week to week.

One of the recent times Rogers visited Morin in Sabattus, things were going well. Morin told Rogers about going to Val’s RootBeer the previous night for french fries and onion rings.

“You look bright this morning,” Rogers told him. “You got a big smile.”

Rogers knows the next time could be different. He could arrive to find Morin unable to sit up long enough for him to rub baby oil on his head. The same is true for all of his patients.

A big board next to his office is updated whenever someone dies. Part of Rogers’ job is to check it every day.