We have experienced another week of steady decline in Dad’s mobility.  He has suffered increased weakness.  I have suffered increased worry.  He cannot walk.  Life is very different when you have walked for 86 years and suddenly find yourself paralyzed and immobile.  The word of the day is “transfer,” by which I mean the experience and process and effort of shifting one’s bulk from one seat surface to another, like from and wheelchair to a toilet, or from a shower chair to a walker chair, in which one moves laterally rather than vertically, and does not ambulate.  I sat down across from Dad to suggest the time had come to focus on transferring rather than walking.  “I think we should refocus our approach,” I explained.  He nodded in sad reconciliation, feeling humiliated and small.  How could I reassure him?  In truth, with the power wheelchair, he can enjoy greater independence and freedom of movement than with trying to walk.  But transference is a skill to be practiced—it is not an easy exercise, and I invite you to pretend your legs do not work and try transferring from one chair to another with only the strength of your arms and the span of your bottom.  Now add arms to those chairs.  To help him transfer from off his sofa to his wheelchair, I installed risers under the sofa feet, raising the couch five inches, and screwed three inches of lumber to the legs of his recliners.  Struggling with this new necessary skill, his transfers can be, shall we say, inaccurate, like onto the arm of a chair instead of into the seat of that chair.  Some transfers are violent, like when he fell from his wheelchair onto his couch so roughly that he knocked the couch of its risers and was lucky not to capsize altogether.  Since the escapade did not end tragically, I can comment after-the-fact on how I wish I had seen it happen and how funny it must have seemed.  A hair’s breadth of fate or providence separates tragedy from comedy.  Dad pronounces all his mishaps as comical, veritable jokes, although he curses more than he laughs when in the midst of transference.  Mom pounced on me when I came home from work, before removing my coat and tie, asking me to re-elevate the couch.  Then she showed me the toilet plunger sitting in the kitchen sink, and explained how the food disposal had plugged up with old spaghetti, and she could not clear the clog, try as she might.  Putting my height and weight into the plunger, I compelled the dirty water and ground up food through the pipes and successfully drained the sink and emptied the disposal.  She is always so grateful when I fix things she can no longer manage.  The next problem to solve involved her pharmacy of 24 years.  She and Dad had received letters informing them that their pharmacy was no longer in their insurance network, and in only two weeks they would have to pay full retail price for their medicines.  I offered to help switch to a new pharmacy, and envisioned the hassle and weariness of assembling all the prescription bottles and insurance cards and driving to the new pharmacy to see the staff and taking an hour to input the data into the new system, and the weather was very cold, and the streets icy, and the sky darkening at 4:30 p.m., and I really did not want to leave the house on this cumbersome errand.  Instead, I called the store, they took our information, and promised to get their information transferred from the old pharmacy to the new.  Mom beamed, amazed at my miracle working with the sink and the pharmacy.  I will try to elicit the same response with tonight’s dinner.  It is time to shift from writing to cooking.

(Pictured above: Italian pesto pasta and chicken with brazed asparagus.)