In the Shadow of the Wheelchair

It was a good thing that home was so near school. It was the second time I had been called home because my mother had fallen. I know I broke speed laws getting there. The home health aide said Mom was still on the floor, that she couldn’t move her so she had called the fire dept and her doctor for help getting her up and checking her over.

The fire dept guys were there before I was and had gotten her up and on the day bed I had fixed for her by the windows. She had one hip that the specialist told us was “gone” and she shouldn’t even by up using her walker. She was 87 and did as she pleased. ( passed her “terminal stubbornness on to me it seems.)

Dr. R., bless him, was still making house calls and after examining her, told me she was going to hurt for a time and that she was going to have to use a wheelchair from now on so it would be safe for her to stay at home with me with the help of an occasional home health aide. I was a couple of years away from retirement but decided we could manage. I wanted her to be happy in her home as long as possible.

I had a wheel chair from a tag sale – it was not pretty and had no brakes, but I knew it would do until the week-end and I could go to get the stuff she would need. I made a list and the first thing that had to be done was take up the carpets to make rolling the chair around as easy as possible. I was so overwhelmed with the whole situation that I accomplished that myself, that night. I had to do something and that was it. I moved furniture, ripped up and rolled up carpets in three rooms. There was nice flooring underneath so using the vac made it livable. Washing, waxing and polishing would have to wait.

Other than picking up that old chair, just in case, I hadn’t envisioned her being permanently in a wheelchair. Thankfully she could get into it on her own. There were steps down to the porch and out the back door into the yard. She couldn’t go out that way. One step down onto the large front porch and I could get a friend to make a little ramp for now, a bigger one ASA to cover the steps from the porch to the front yard. Then she could get out of the house safely if need be.

There was a step up into the bathroom that she couldn’t handle. That meant bed-pans until I could get a commode to stand beside her bed. I would need to take on meal prep because it wasn’t safe for her to use the stove. I reasoned I could make large portions and plate them and have them in the freezer or ‘fridge. She could get them there.

I don’t know where my brain had been that I hadn’t envisioned this possibility before. I had just accepted her as she was and not thinking of anything beyond her current condition. When asked, she was always “just fine” and everything was “OK” and we, my sister, the visiting nurses, the home health aides and I, allowed ourselves to believe her.

I was finally able (through Medicare– I don’t remember) to get her a new wheelchair. There was such a happy celebration when it arrived – bright, shiny blue, with brakes, comfortable seat and back, and foot rests! She was soon zipping around the house, happy with her new mode of transportation. She went to bed happy. She dealt with reality and acceptance much better than I. I went to bed and wept.

After Mom died, the wheelchair was the first thing I sold – to a delighted little lady who came with her daughter to see it. I couldn’t bear the sight of it. It represented too much pain, too much reliance on others, too much a loss of freedom of movement, too much of a loss of control, too much giving in to the conditions of old age, too much of the reality that old age was coming for me too.

And here it is. Now that I am having trouble getting around, kind friends have suggested a wheelchair so they could take me to places walking would be not only hard but impossible for me. A wheelchair, a temporary aid, they suggest, not a permanent addition to my life. A wheelchair - and I remember all its implications. When that day comes, I need to forget all the problems a wheelchair entailed and keep alive Mom’s positive, cheerful disposition, her acceptance of the reality of her life and the lack of complaint when she would say she was “fine” and everything was “OK”. I must admit though, it scares me.