“In what universe do you think this is sustainable!” I want to scream at him.  Dad is lying naked on the floor, having collapsed on his one-step voyage to the portable potty.  Mom had screamed “I need help with your dad!” from downstairs, and I knew before launching to the rescue that Dad was on the floor.  All I can do is stare grudgingly at him, this man for whom my responsibility is to do the impossible: get him up off the floor and onto the toilet seat.  “In what universe do you think we can keep doing this!” I choke back the words.  Mom begs me to call this neighbor and that neighbor, and I shoot back that if I call anyone it will not be the poor neighbors, but the paramedics.  His walker lies, folded, on the floor across the room to where it rolled, and from it I retrieve the gate belt sewn with four helpful handles.  The first impossible part of the impossible hoisting procedure is to pass the buckle and strap under his chest, and I jam the buckle under him and haul on his shoulder and hip to roll him over enough to pull the strap through and cinch it tight around his slack once-muscled chest and above his now bulging belly.  On the count of three I heave from the handles and Mom lifts and Dad pushes, and we, as a team, we manage to raise him to his hands and knees, upending my predictions.  But there is no resting position for him, only multiple collapsing positions, so we move quickly into the next phase, in which he grasps the potty handles and somehow I lift his bulk enough for him to lift his knees and I wrestle his backside onto the potty seat.  My silent screaming continues, now about how much I hate this experience!  But I do not scream.  I never scream.  I never chastise or berate.  I never shout.  Except that one time he condescended to me for installing a wider bathroom door without his permission on the eve of his return home from the nursing home, and I instantly boiled over from quiet to rage bursting from its cage of lifelong inhibition and I pounded on the kitchen counter and I thought I had broken my hand on the stone kitchen counter, the time Sarah was a living witness, a breathing comfort to me.  And now he is moving his bowels and is bossing Mom to bring him his walker because he can’t, he says, do anything without his walker right in front of him, and the bossiness is a cover for his embarrassment and powerlessness and fear.  “I’m trembling, Rog.  I’m so weak and shaky.”  No shit, I retorted in silent and staring thought, trembling myself.  I muscle him from the potty to the walker and muscle him from the walker to the bed, using hands and arms and knees, maneuvering methodically to leverage every opportunity to inch by inch transfer his bulk to his bed.  The crisis is over, and I announce that I’m going to bed, and I wish him good luck for a good night’s sleep, and I take a sleeping pill.

(Pictured: ivy on my Chicago daughter’s wall.)