Tag Archives: Caregiver

Courage at Twilight: A Heel and A Moron

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Mom startled me with a sharp rap-rap on the door of my home office, where I sat focused on my laptop screen, lost in classic rock. She cried and squeaked out her Sunday afternoon plea for me to push her for a walk around the block.  I detest being started, and reacted involuntarily harshly.  “I don’t think it will rain,” she hoped.  Thunderclouds thickened and lighting sheeted over the neighborhood—and the rain began to fall.  With each passing car, I thought, They must think I’m such a moron for taking my parents in their wheelchairs in the rain.  But we actually loved the gentle shower.  Mom tilted her head back and spread her arms wide to the sky.  All three of us wondered if I would be struck by lightning.  In the moment, I didn’t care.  Returning home, I saw that the porch lights were on, three hours before sundown.  With such irritation, I have been snapping the porch lights off, for months.  Why does she turn the lights on so early every day, I finally asked her.  “I turn them on for you, to welcome you home from work.”  Finally I saw the early-afternoon porch lights for what they were: a mother’s welcome home to her little boy who has been away all day.  I such a heel, I thought.  A moron and a heel.  Before situating Dad back into his recliner, I studied the multicompartmentalized cushion he sits on, designed to avoid pressure sores.  The cushion had flattened over the months.  Mom watched me intently as I tried and failed to use the tire pump, the bike pump, and the ball pump, struggling to inflate the cushion.  The stem closed with clockwise turn, but by the time I quickly closed the stem, the cushion had lost all my hard-blown air.  I sat on a stool with the stem between my teeth, still blowing, and spinning the cushion around to close the stem.    “Thanks for doing that, Roger.  I have a pressure sore on my butt, and a full cushion should help.”

Courage at Twilight: Rack and Pinion

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I arise at 6:00 a.m. (ideally), slip on my gym clothes, and slink down the stairs without a sound to sit on the stationary bicycle.  I must read when I ride or I go mad with boredom and from focusing on the discomfort of hard exercise.  But Dad’s room is immediately adjacent, and the light would strike him fully in the sleeping face.  My headlamp is the answer.  I puff as I push and as I read N.T. Wright’s New Testaments translations and commentaries, and Dad is none the wiser (though I certainly hope I am).  But today the headlamp became moot, and I flipped the light switch on.  We are poorer in the pocket, but enriched with new possibilities for mobility and independence.  The stair lift finally has been installed.  And the taste is sour-sweet.  As Dad held the lever in the “up” position, the chair he sat slumped in rose slowly to the landing, pivoted 90 degrees, and carried him to the top of the staircase.  He ascended with a vacant emotionless expression.  Dad has new independence, even with increased weakness.  Dad has improved mobility, even with increased paralysis and pain.  Dad carries a dual humiliation: the marathon runner who cannot walk; sitting hunched in a chair, himself motionless, being rack-and-pinioned to the second floor.  Not a time of celebration.  Rather, a time of adjustment to a new tool and to a new routine, a time of relief with the decreased risk of ending his life horribly by falling down the stairs, a time to confront the fact that he will never climb the stairs again under his own power.  I asked for the opportunity to talk through how bedtime would now work, not just for him, but for Mom and me also, and I thought we settled on moving toward the stair lift and toward bed at 10:30 p.m. after the nightly news.  But discovered that he had settled on reading until midnight and moving himself achingly with his not-a-walker to transfer to the stair lift and push the “up” paddle, to push his heavy-duty blue walker to his bed, where he climbed in next to his sweetheart for the first time in ten long weeks, without an ounce of worry from me because of the lift.  A cause for celebration after all.  Four-year-old Gabe joined me in my own celebratory ride by sitting on my lap as I held the paddle in the “up” position and we rack-and-pinioned our way slowly up the stairs.

Courage at Twilight: Miracle #1 (My Lease)

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For me to implement the plan, I would need at least two miracles.  I consider a miracle to be a desirable occurrence which is beyond human ability to create, brought about by some benevolent force, providential or universal.  In my belief system, miracles have a divine origin, manifesting a loving Divinity.  The first miracle I would need involved my apartment lease, which I had just renewed for another year.  Should I vacate early, my landlords could accelerate the remaining lease payments and demand the forbidding sum of $12,000.  An absolute impossibility.  I asked my siblings and children to join me in prayer to soften my landlords’ hearts, to allow me to vacate early.  I wrote to my landlords about my situation, and my reasons for moving.  They responded quickly, agreeing to let me leave without penalty.  Coincidentally, my son Brian and his wife Avery and their darling daughter Lila (my first grandchild) had decided to move from Kentucky back to Utah, to be closer to family.  But they had not succeeded in finding a place to live.  Utah is experiencing a persistent housing gap, with about 50,000 more families looking for housing than there are houses to buy or rent, and with soaring prices.  Not only did my landlords agree to let me terminate my lease early, they agreed to allow Brian and Avery to sign a lease for my apartment.  And because I will not need my furnishings at Mom’s and Dad’s house, Brian and Avery will step into a fully-furnished and decorated apartment at no additional cost.  As these two critical pieces of the puzzle fell into place, I gave thanks in prayer for the blessings.  An elegant, perfect, miraculous turn of events.  Only one more major miracle was needed.

Courage at Twilight: The Proposal

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#5.  My sister Sarah bought Mom and Dad a Facebook Portal, although they struggle with technology and do not want “a Facebook.”  The Portal sits like a small TV screen on their kitchen table.  Having my siblings’ blessing, I felt an urgency to talk with Mom and Dad immediately about my proposal to move in with them—so many puzzle pieces would need to fall into place in the right order—but I did not want to have such an important conversation on the phone, and right then I could not drive the hour each way to visit them in person.  Why not use the Portal?  When Mom and Dad answered, I saw them sitting big as life at their kitchen table.  They lifted their heads slightly from looking through scalloped bifocals.  They could see me at my desk in Tooele with my law certificates, plants, books, family photos, and Van Gogh paintings around me.  For me, too, the bifocal tilt.  I explained my concerns about their welfare and my proposal to move from my home to theirs, to help them live comfortably and safely in their home for as long as they wished.  I mustered my most persuasive presentation, anxious about how they might react.  Happily, Mom seemed relieved, and said simply, “Thank you, son.  That would be wonderful.”  Dad seemed grateful, but concerned—for me.  We talked things through—my move, my commute, my work, my parenting with Hannah—and they agreed to the proposal.  The plan was now in motion.

Courage at Twilight: An Introduction

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Courage at Twilight: An Introduction

Day #1.  I knew the day would come.  The day when my vibrant marathon-running violin-playing father and mother would grow old, grow feeble, stumble and fall.  And I wondered how I could feebly stumble in my filial role to give them care.  I am older than I thought parents could get, and certainly not me: a near-60 divorced lawyer writer mountain biker.  One day it became clear the solution to the problem was to move in with my parents and provide for them the best care I knew how.  And I knew writing would help me understand the experience.  Join me as I travel this unfamiliar road, through short daily vignettes, to contribute to the quality of life of my aging parents, and to make sense of my life as they journey toward their life’s end and beyond.

Roger Baker
August 1, 2021