Writing EDD 2/24/2016 — Wheelchair
I must have folded the wheelchair up and put it in the back of my car. I don’t remember that part. I can’t remember if I carried her to the…
I must have folded the wheelchair up and put it in the back of my car. I don’t remember that part. I can’t remember if I carried her to the passenger’s seat or if she was able to lift herself from the wheelchair to the seat of the car. I do remember pushing her down the steep ramp that goes from the parking lot to the beach. Not really pushing her, but pulling back on the chair as I rolled her to the sand below. It was a warm day, but windy. I remember knowing that she wouldn’t be alive much longer. I showed her my apartment, the cramped and dirty studio that I shared with my girlfriend, the one with the drug dealer next door, the drug dealing spear fisherman who would sometimes bring us freshly caught fish with small on. We went to Dairy Queen after that and ordered Blizzards and there was a game room attached to Dairy Queen, an old arcade and we played pool. I can’t remember if she stood up or sat in her wheelchair, but I remember the wind and the sun and her blonde hair washing across her face and her smile and laugh as I pushed her back up the steep ramp and I’ll always remember how heavy that was. She was 13 and tiny, body ravaged by her disease and the transplant operation and the coma, but maybe it was the chair that was so heavy, or maybe it wasn’t heavy at all, maybe it’s just how I remember it.