wheelchair ramp: gone

A few days ago, Mr. Jeong came by to tear down the wheelchair ramp that members of our church, along with some employees from the local hardware store, had kindly set up for Mom last summer. Mr. Jeong was the contractor whose team performed the amazing renovation of the parents' house; he'll be back in a few weeks to work on renovating our attic and our front porch. Once the attic is ready, we'll be able to store all the stuff that's been sitting downstairs in our basement/family room for over a year. None of it moved during the renovation, and once Mom became sick, that pile shot down to the bottom of our list of priorities.

It's strange seeing our deck without that makeshift wooden ramp there. The removal of the ramp feels like a partial erasure of the past, almost as if poor Mom never existed. I don't like that feeling of dislocation that the absence of the ramp produces, and I'll be happy when I'm finally used to its not being there. For his part, Mr. Jeong came over on the worst day possible, pollen-wise, but he's a tough hombre, and he dismantled the entire ramp himself, despite his runny nose and watery eyes. I offered him some allergy meds, but he said, "Isseoyo. Soyong eopseoyo." ("I have some. But it's no use.") A job that would have taken me three days took him about three-and-a-half hours. Pretty incredible.


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