“Is today Tuesday?” Dad suddenly asked. “No,” I responded carefully, “today is Sunday.”  “Oh, right,” and he observed how the days melt together, for during all of these days he sits in his recliner reading bestseller books, except for the compulsory state and national news and political commentaries.  But I suspected this was more than the melting together of days.  He is forgetting, losing his bearings.  For my part, having made a study of grief and empathy in recent months, my word for the week is integration, by which I mean the perpetual process of welcoming into myself all of myselves: my fearful child and anxious adolescent, my flaws and brilliance, my wounded divorcé and bursting-with-proud father, all of my joyful wounded grieving giggling selves, the Me’s of every day and year and hour, with every cruelty and kindness meted out and swallowed—all of me, every bit, every moment—they are all here in a single whole Me, and I am working to love and to welcome even the unlovable and unbelonging pieces of my fractured whole.  Integration eddied and swam in my thoughts as I sat in the 100-degree sun ridding the grassy strip between street and sidewalk of tentacled clover choking the grass, for hours, my hands aching and my head pulsing with heat.  But I could not stop weeding.  Was I trying to impress Mom and Dad, or the neighbors?  Was my fealty working out a good son’s guilt?  Was I aching for praise, or craving perfection?  Dad cannot do it, so I will, and we will enjoy the results together.  On that hot afternoon, their bedroom registered 85 degrees Fahrenheit; my room climbed to 90.  So, I slept in the basement where the air always flows cool.  For reasons he cannot fathom, Dad stuck his gym on the armrest of his recliner, then stuck himself to his gum, which promptly stretched and gooed in his fingers.  Mom pulled out the trusty old (banned) bottle of Thoro and cotton-balled it onto his fingertips and forearm and the armrest and quickly dissolved the gum.  The room reeked of naphtha, and Dad complained of the chemical taste on his tongue even though Mom and I both washed and scrubbed the armrest with various detergents and covered it with towels.  “Thoro: The All-Purpose Spot Remover Since 1902!” the bottle title boasted, with the small-print subtitle, “Fatal If Swallowed.”  We really did try to be careful.  At least the gum is gone.