As my father battles Lou Gehrig’s disease, I have come to the painful realization that this disease is moving faster than we are. The other night, I came home to find my cousin in the driveway with my mom. He had an electric lawnmower and was actually showing my mom how to mow the front lawn. Luckily, we do not have a large yard and it is not particularly well-groomed anyways. But, this was ALWAYS my father’s job. As I type this, I realize that there were a few years during my teen years, where it was my job. But certainly in the last 20 years, I have never mowed the lawn.
I also just realized that my father was using the same gas mower that we have always had! This thing is a relic and if my memory serves me correctly, never really worked all that well to begin with. Apparently, last week, my dad attempted, stupidly, to mow the lawn despite his condition. Well, he fell down a couple of times trying to pull-start the engine.
Since those falls, my mom suggested that she be the one to do this chore (no one consulted me with this decision, of course). My cousin had an electric mower and brought it over and instructed my mom in the finer points of lawn care.
Imagine my surprise pulling into my driveway and seeing my mom, with her arthritic knees, dragging the machine around in curvy attempts at straight lines and trying not to run over the cord. I saw my dad, supervising the lesson, clearly laughing on the inside at the thought of an electric lawnmower. As far as my dad was concerned, each blade of grass was made of titanium requiring mega-horsepower and a wake of burning oil billowing behind him.
But, that moment, coupled with an ever-increasing number of moments, stabs me in the heart with the realization that our lives are changing and we are slowly accommodating. The status quo is no longer. At 78, my father can no longer mow the lawn. He cannot make it into the basement to HIS tool bench that at most I have been allowed to borrow from his collection of 15 hammers. He did not help me install the AC in his dining room yesterday and when I needed a saw to cut a strip of wood and I could not find one. I asked him and he wrote down precisely where 7 of his rusty old saws were hanging. His role has changed in just a few short months from the man who could build shelves using scraps of wood; no shelf matching the one above it and no 90 degree angels to be found anywhere. The man who nurtured each tomato to perfect ripeness, no longer notices the weeds have overtaken the garden and we can no longer determine where the basil lives.
As we all watched and laughed at the bittersweet image of my mom mowing the lawn, while my father relinquished control for the first time in his life, I stopped smiling and began to cry.