You smile back from your bed and watch me as I attach the four clips to the blue netting beneath you. As I pump the lift’s lever, you slowly rise up off the bed, dangling like the basket under a hot air balloon.
Up, Up, Up in the Air, I sing softly. Slowly swinging you over the wheelchair. Lowering you gingerly for a soft landing.
Nurse Alice, your middle-daughter and my sister, assured me the lift was learnable, and she was correct. You and I agree the lift is much safer than some of our early outings with the wheelchair when a crack in the sidewalk sent your arms flailing, and me apologizing, and both of us laughing at the memory.
We spend the next 40 minutes with your youngest Dianne, the two of us work in tandem to get you to the bathroom, clean up, and dress. You smile your approval of the butterfly earrings that match your blouse. I need to massage your left earlobe before the reluctant hole allows me to push the wire through. Success.
After your oatmeal, walnut, flax, chia, half and half, berry breakfast, they arrive—the art therapist and her boss, who is observing today. After Dianne and I clear the table, the artist unpacks her rolling cart. She offers you agency—what medium would you like? She pulls out materials. Collage? Watercolor? Acrylic? She shows you an array of possibilities that you would have welcomed weeks ago. But today, you fidget. You know there’s something she wants from you that you can’t provide.
I choose paint pens and the stress dissolves.
You smile.
The artist positions the paper, slips the purple between your fingers, and today, the last time your brush will cross paper, it will be with a hand under your hollowed hand, together painting the African Violets you expertly grew that pose now by the window in the morning light, so that you will feel this morning all the other times your brush made magic and brought you peace.
