Dad hears better from the front church pew, which is cut out on one side to accommodate a wheelchair. Mom sits in the pew, and Dad sits in his wheelchair, the two holding hands with their faces lifted appreciatively toward the speakers.  One eighty-year-young friend of Dad’s observed, “It’s good to see you using a wheelchair, Nelson,” implying how awful it has been to see him leaning into his cane and hanging on my arm and still barely making it down the aisle.  In choir practice before church, we rehearsed the hymn “Have I done any good?” and at night I lay in my bed asking that question of myself, with dark and pressing doubts.  For today is day 365 since I left my life alone and moved into a life with Mom and Dad as an awkward caregiver in their waning—today is my first anniversary, our first anniversary.  Will there be any more anniversaries?  Even before moving into their house, I knew the experience would be intense and trying, not for any fault of theirs, but from the story’s inexorable ending, and from my own character flaws, and that I would tend to lose my sense of self, my sense of direction in life, my sense of fatherhood in my renewed sonhood, my sense of the future and self-purpose, and I knew I would need to write about my experience, daily, to work things through in my mind, to keep from being swallowed alive.  I felt compelled to write, and indeed I did write daily entries for 265 consecutive days before faltering in fog and fatigue.  This is essay #290: 290 shards of shattered glass through which to examine and strain to comprehend my experience in all its complex facets.  If I have not done much good, that failure has not been for lack of arduous effort.  If I have done some good after all, that good was worth the effort.  This post is not pandering for praise or angling for affirmation, and is not focused on self-flagellation.  This post simply poses the question, and makes a way for me to move on in the mission of doing what I can to bring comfort and safety to my parents as they careen toward their end, that the end may be comfortably and safely in their beloved home at the foot of the great snow-topped aspen-clad mountain.  But, still, and always, I shall ask myself that question, and sing the hymn quietly in the darkness to myself at night.

Have I done any good in the world today?

Have I helped anyone in need?

Have I cheered up the sad and made someone feel glad?

If not, I have failed indeed.

Has anyone’s burden been lighter today

Because I was willing to share?

Have the sick and the weary been helped on their way?

When they needed my help was I there?

Then wake up and do something more

Thank dream of your mansion above.

Doing good is a pleasure, a joy beyond measure,

A blessing of duty and love.