Wheelchair | Rabbit Lane

Sarah introduced me to Jennifer, who explained the caregiver services her staff will provide every morning from 9:30 to 11:30, seven days a week—help Dad get out of bed, get showered and dried and dressed, get his Cheerios-and-blueberry breakfast, get him settled in his recliner with the newspaper and his books, wipe down the shower, empty and clean the commode, take out the trash, wash the dirty clothes, clean up after breakfast, prepare his lunch for later, help him pull weeds and trim bushes, get him ready for church on Sundays, and carry on conversation. Your staff will do all that for him? “Sparking lives” is what her company pledges—helping Dad find the “spark” in a life heavy with deepening disability. My own heaviness eased a bit with the hope of burdens shared. Mom has been Dad’s spark these long weeks, spending hours with him every single day, smuggling hamburgers and fries, reading Trivial Pursuit questions, listening to his complaints and discomforts, patting and rubbing his hands, kissing him good-night, and calling “Good-night, Dear” on her way out the door every night. I do not recall ever seeing Mom and Dad kiss as I was growing up, or later, or now. But she has insisted on delivering to her husband a tender and definite kiss on the mouth every night. Jeanette and Sarah and Carolyn and Megan have been sparks of pleasant light with their frequent visits, bringing comfort and cheer and strength and love. I hope cooking nice dinners will sparkle their days, meals they can look forward to and enjoy. Dad’s last two dinners at the rehab facility—if one can call them meals at all—consisted of two bologna and cheese sliders one night, and two boiled hot dogs on buns the next. Having enjoyed a clandestine bacon-burger shortly before dinner, Dad ate only one hot dog, and gave the other to Mom, which she wrapped in a paper towel and lodged in her purse for later. Cooking starts tomorrow because Dad comes home tomorrow; not that I did not cook for Mom—we enjoyed steamed vegetables and hard-boiled eggs many evenings—light, simple, and healthy meals (making allowance for bowls of chocolate after-dinner ice cream). For Dad to ride his power wheelchair from the van into the house, I needed to supply wheelchair ramps, two to hurdle the porch and one to access the drop-step living room. No suitable ramps could be had on KSL Classifieds or on Facebook Marketplace or at Harbor Freight—all suggested to me by the wheelchair supplier—and I refused to spend $559 each from the grab bar vendor—so I resolved to make the ramps myself. I sketched a simple design and made a materials list. With no workshop of my own, I appreciated Lowe’s for cutting my lumber to specs at no additional cost. I assembled the ramps at home, pushing through moments of tool-frustration and self-doubt, and they are sturdy and smooth and precise. If Dad wants, we can paint over the bare plywood later. For now, when he comes home, he will be able to motor himself from the transport van (Sarah is his chauffeur) into the house, able to reach every corner of the ground floor. He can read as long as he wants in his living room recliner, and then motor himself to his hospital bed. But if wants to go upstairs to his own room and bed, his familiar comfortable bed, the deadline for his staircase climb will be 10 p.m. sharp.

We were here! At the Temple Quarry Trail, for a new adventure, the adventure of the rolling immobile, Mom and Dad guided by myself and my sister Sarah pushing their wheelchairs. I discovered the short asphalt trail when finding my hiking/biking trail which starts from the same trailhead. Availing ourselves of the handicapped parking, and knowing the restroom was there just in case any of us needed it, we set off on the trail, Mom and Dad debuting their “new” used wheelchairs. The trail was paved, but there was nothing flat about it, and I strained, my body slanted to 45 degrees, to muscle the chair and its occupant up the incline. This was the place where a century and a half ago the newly-arrived Latter-day Saints chiseled by hand enormous granite blocks from the mountain as foundation stones for their new Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah. The men worked in pairs, one holding a pointed steel bar, the other striking it with a sledgehammer, the bar man turning the bar a quarter turn, and the sledger striking the bar again, and the turn, and the strike, slowly drilling a hole six inches into the rock. I cannot help but wonder how many arm bones and hand bones and finger bones were shattered by errant blows. After a line of holes had been “drilled,” the mason inserted steel wedges and hammered until the granite broke with a “crack” in a neat line. We could see the wedge holes in the giant slab of rock before us, and we shook our heads in awe at how the rudimentary techniques and tools of the time nevertheless resulted in a gloriously beautiful and sacred structure, a monument to the Living God and a tribute to his humble stonemasons and carpenters and plasterers and painters and tinsmiths and goldsmiths. We pushed on, the river cascading in our ears, the granite mountain soaring overhead, the trees closing in gently over the trail where we pushed our parents. There were their childhood canyons and rivers, their playgrounds and adventure grounds, and now here they were at the ends of their lives able to enjoy again, though differently, the sounds and sights and smells, because of wheeled chairs we all wish they did not need but which make these nature walks possible and pleasurable and safe (presuming one always engages the wheel breaks when letting go of the handles, which as a novice wheelchair facilitator I was careful to do). Then the darkening clouds opened and baptized us with a gentle warm summer shower, and we turned our faces upwards and embraced each raindrop. The Salt Lake Temple was completed and dedicated in 1893, a full forty years after its commencement. The temple foundations stones weighed dozens of tons each, and broke the wagons and exhausted the oxen and foundered the canal boats and finally came more easily when the railroad spur reach the quarry. But these remarkable people built that stunning thing which we call The House of the Lord. The Temple stands strong and tall on its old granite foundation stones, not granite at all, actually, but quartz monzonite, a pretty white with black specks. “White granite” they called it, and I am happy to call it granite, too. We all thought we should roll the Temple Quarry Trail often, to get out of the house, to get into nature, to see the canyon as the seasons change and the gambel oaks and mountain maples and boxelders and wild cherries lose their leaves and the stream slows and freezes and the granite mountain stands as strong and as tall as ever.