the.mens.room

The man in the wheelchair - the man in the tan corduroy ball cap wearing the too-large cranberry jacket, that's my dad. I see him down the hallway at the VA outpatient clinic, sitting across from my mom.

He's smaller than me now, this man that always stood tall in character and personality. Some days I wish we could go back to a simpler time, when I was his little girl and he was my daddy. Now we walk in role reversal - I am the caregiver, he is the one cared for. It's the least I can do. But. Sometimes. It is damn hard.

Like today when I went to pick them up for the appointment and found him, pants around his ankles, sitting on the chair buttoning his shirt with awkward hands. We were supposed to be walking out the door that moment. Mom and I orchestrated a finely-tuned dance where I got the car and she kept him focused on getting dressed and then I took over, threading his belt and combing his hair, getting his cap and coat on.

Ah. What happened to my dad, the dapper man? It takes us all to make him dapper.

We got to our appointment, nearly on time, and were waiting for the doctor to call us in.

And then it happened.

I have to go to the bathroom, he said.

A complex set of emotions pummeled me. Empathy wrestled with frustration, impatience with responsibility. What to do?

I did what he probably would have done had the tables been turned.

I pushed his wheelchair into the men's room, got him established in the handicapped stall, and went back into the hall to wait.

And wait.

Checking in. No, he wasn't ready for me to retrieve him.

The doctor's LPN came to call us in.

I explained. She said she'd come back.

A young man offered to help.

I checked again. Not ready. You can't hurry this, he said, or words to that effect.

I had a stranger, a kind African American man, check. Not ready.

LPN came again. Five minutes, she said.

Traffic in the men's room increased, along with my blood pressure.

A man nearer my age said not to worry, to come in anyway.

Dad was ready. I have to wash my hands, he said. I pulled the wheelchair out of the stall and pushed pushed Dad to the sink, then turned the faucets on. Washing his hands consisted of holding his right hand under the water. I put soap on my hands and offered it to him. No.

And the man near my age said how it sucks to get old, and I said what my dad always said, "Consider the alternative." And then the man said how our parents took care of us, so I responded that now we get to do this. And I meant it.

It's hard sometimes to count the joy.

The joy in this day is that I am strong and I am able to help.

The joy in this day is that I can help write this chapter, perhaps the last, in my dad's life.

And that I can write this chapter with all the love in my heart as an expression of gratitude for all the times he took care of me.