“I’m cold,” I heard Dad protest to Mom, who suggested he put on something warm.  I retrieved his sweatshirt from his office/bedroom and helped him find the arms.  Mom draped a crocheted blanket over him.  Normally, Dad, when cold, would ask the leading rhetorical question, “Should we turn on the fireplace?”  But the fireplace quit, despite the pilot light still burning—I was glad I smelled no gas—so we guessed a bad switch.  Out of fear of dying unpleasantly, I do not tinker with gas plumbing or electrical wiring, so we called Adam’s HVAC, who can come in two weeks.  Warmed up and growing hot, Dad cast off his blanket and shuffled to his office to write an email to a grandchild.  Sitting in his office chair, it suddenly sank on failed hydraulics to its lowest setting, and he could not get up from the chair without help, and I could not repair the chair.  While I baked cored apples filled with brown sugar, Splenda, and butter last week, I noticed the oven not heating well, and saw a molten metal bubble forming on the element.  When the box from Amazon came, I switched the breaker to “off” (that I will do) and installed the new element, though the old wiring needed coaxing to fit the new leads.  And I twisted and bent my glasses, because I put them on my bed and sat on them squarely.  Things break.  Sometimes they can be fixed.  Dad’s new physical therapist, Jerry, came one evening with his New Zealand speak to do therapy, and I learned why therapists order, “Up up up!” when having Dad stand, so that he engages his hip flexors and quadriceps so he can stand tall and take full steps and not a mere forward-leaning controlled-fall shuffle.  Jerry was gentle and patient and caring—I am always grateful for gentle, patient, caring people, in any profession.  But later Dad complained to me about how weak he was, that this was his worst day since he left the rehab center a month ago.  Such pronouncements sag my spirits, and I fret over any number of imagined impending crises.  Yeah, things break.  I pushed Dad in his wheelchair into the chapel Sunday morning—we were late, and I felt unhappy about being late—and Dad waved like teen royalty on a parade float as many congregants waved and smiled at him as we rolled down the aisle to the front handicapped pew.  If his legs will not work, the wheelchair works wonderfully well.  But I did not wave or smile—I was just the driver.  My mayor’s mother passed away unexpectedly from a random blood clot lodged in her heart, and I expressed my genuine condolences with a little ornamental pepper plant looking like a bonsai Christmas tree with tiny red lights.  I had known my boss’ mother, enjoyed meals and jokes, and I liked her and felt sad she was gone.  Old people go, frequently, and I came home that night with renewed gratitude for my parents, an increased measure of tenderness and patience, for they are sweet and loving and generous, and I have them still.  Things break, and we fix them, when we can, and continue onward.