New year. New look. New focus. New voice. Same commitment.
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Topic: Ableism (6)
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Listen to Ramona and Rod’s story as you read it (below).
It was 8:30 in the morning. Ramona set Rod’s coffee mug on the table and tried to pretend the routine was the same. Rod’s new wheelchair fit between table and counter like a hard new rule.
When the visiting nurse left, Ramona stepped onto the stoop and found her neighbor, Darlene, fussing with a planter.
“I do not mean it the way it sounds,” Ramona confided. Then the truth slipped out. “He’s not the same Rod. I want the old Rod back.”
Darlene’s eyes darted to the kitchen window.
Rod sat inside, facing the glass. His mind was still sharp. His speech came out blurred, and people too often acted as if blur meant empty.
All afternoon, Ramona moved through the house with guilty quiet. She caught herself doing things for Rod that he could still do, partly from love, partly from impatience, partly from fear of watching him struggle.
Near dinner, someone knocked.
Clarence stood there with a notepad and a carpenter’s pencil. He walked with a brace and a practiced limp, not hidden.
“I heard you’ve got a new traffic pattern in here,” he said. “Want another set of eyes?”
Clarence did not speak over Rod. He spoke to him. “If you could change one thing, what would it be?”
Rod worked the word into the air. “Cup.” He pointed to the cabinet above the counter.
Ramona followed his finger. The cups were too high for Rod’s good arm to reach without an awkward stretch.
Clarence lowered two sturdy cups to the counter and slid the mug tree closer. Then he moved Ramona’s chair a few inches, opening space beside the table.
Rod reached. The mug wobbled. His fingers tightened. He steadied it and brought it closer, slow and exact.
The motion was not graceful, but he had earned it.
Clarence watched without rushing him. “Working hard at precisely the things you need to improve,” he said. “That is part of how we stay resilient. A limitation does not make you less. It gives you something to practice.”
Clarence tapped his pencil. “Limitation is not only loss. It is information. People build better tools and better routines because something does not work the easy way. Innovation grows out of the stubborn spots.”
Rod looked up at him, eyes clear.
“And we do not devalue the difference,” Clarence said. “We value it. See me. This leg taught me how to plan, how to ask, how to make room.”
When Clarence left, the kitchen felt different – not because Rod had changed but because the room had started to cooperate with who Rod was now.
Ramona stood behind Rod’s chair. “I said something outside,” she began. “To Darlene.”
Rod’s head tilted, listening.
“I said you’re not the same Rod,” Ramona said. “I said I wanted the old you back.”
Rod searched for clean sounds. “Same,” he said at last. He touched his chest with two fingers and then his temple. “Same.”
Ramona blinked hard. “You are,” she said. “You are you.”
Rod tried again. “New.” It came out soft, but it landed. He lifted his right hand, palm up, offering her the word.
Ramona sat down across from him. “I miss your voice,” she said. “I miss how fast you moved. I miss our old rhythm.”
Rod held her gaze, steady and uninsulted.
“I keep trying to erase the struggle,” Ramona said, “because watching you fight for a simple thing scares me. But the fight is part of your learning. It is part of us learning.”
She nodded, feeling the choice settle. “We can practice what needs practicing. We can work around what will not return. We can make this house smarter, and our habits kinder. And I can stop measuring you against a version of you that only exists in my memory.”
Rod reached across the table, slow and precise, and found her fingers. His grip was firm.
Ramona held on. Not to the old Rod, and not to a fantasy of recovery, but to the Rod who was here, clear-minded and determined, carrying a difference that deserved its own space and respect.
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Age: Our greatest asset!
Jim Hasse, ABC, GCDF retired, author of “52 Shades of Growing Together”
Weekly Stories About Insightful Aging
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Several times here at the Pillars I’ve heard some loving person say, “I miss [husband/wife]” when they are not grieving a death, but rather the radical changes dementia, a stroke or any of the sundry “whips and scorn of time” have beset a loved one. Here’s a song I heard some years back that has stuck in my mind and heart ever since, “His Left Side.”
https://www.reverbnation.com/claudianygaard/song/11593626-his-left-side
His Left Side
By Claudia Nygaard
He said “I’m coming’ home soon”
With the light in his cataract eyes
Once I get over this stroke
That messed up my left side
When your mama passed away
Thought I wanted to die
But now I’m ready to come back home
As soon as I can use my left side
He said “Those twenty acres
We could plant some corn.
I want to get it in early
Before the sheep are shorn.
And maybe I’ll buy a pony
Teach my brand new son to ride
There’s a lot I’d like to do
As soon as I can use my left side
He’s going home again
Where the sky’s so blue
It seems like it won’t end
He’s going home again
Where smell of new-mown hay
Is hanging in the wind
And the first thing that he’ll do
Is watch the sun rise from the porch
The second thing he’ll do
Is saddle up that quarter horse
….and he’ll ride…
Ride and ride
As soon as he can use
His left side
Pam and I were on a road trip around the big island in Hawaii about 20 years ago and discovered a U.S. national park along our route.
Looking forward to a leisurely trek through the park, we turned into the parking lot, found a disability parking spot and began to unload my mobility scooter from our car’s trunk.
Just then, a park ranger abruptly came up to us and announced, “You can’t use that here. The paths are too steep.”
I was puzzled because my scooter was powerful and self breaking and never encountered that ban before – especially in a national park.
We did visit the tourist shop under his watchful eye and finally decided to leave and continue our road trip – surprised by the ban.
After all, we had driven up Pikes Peak in Colorado a couple of years before and tooled around with my scooter at the very top with no problem. But, yes, it was flat at the very top.
* When have you had the opportunity to make personal peace with a new limitation?