The Little Blue Scooter

Guest Post by Mr. Don Price.  This is the second post by Mr. Price, who became a Widower Dec. 26, 2016.  The first post “A Widower’s Letter to His Wife” was posted earlier on this site.  In many ways they were able to achieve an ideal marriage, moving towards great inner harmony with one another.  Don’s experience of his late Wife’s blue Scooter, is understood by all who have experienced deep loss.  It is also on his new site honouring life with his Wife, almost ready for the world to see.  Because his perspective can touch so deeply, we share it here with his blessings.

The Little Blue Scooter

If people come to our house, they see a little blue electric scooter parked in a corner of the living  room.  Most people don’t appear to really notice it. It’s just a scooter. They walk by it,  they drape their coats on it. Put stuff on the seat. It’s like a piece of furniture.

But not to me.

I keep it clean. I keep it charged up. When I walk by it now and then, I reach out and gently touch it. It looks kind of like an elegant, comfortable office chair on wheels. It has two arms that  fold up  out of the way, with a tiny “joy stick” on the right arm, so she  could use her fingers to make it go  forward, or backward, or turn or even  spin in a circle. It’s powerful but very precise and nimble.  It  has a pretty bright green back pack hanging on the back of the padded grey seat rest.  I got the green back pack so that I could hide and quiet the air pump motor that inflates the  special seat. The special seat can inflate all at once or alternate different air cells   within it so that she won’t have to go to the hospital again for surgery like she did in 2014. She had sat too long in a wheel chair and got a pressure ulcer that went right  down to the bone which then got  infected and she almost died. She was in the hospital  for months.

But the scooter fixed that  and made her safe again. The special air seat cost 1400 dollars.  The scooter cost about 600 dollars. I spent months on the internet to find them. I  spent months looking for a scooter that was just the right size, with the right clearance off  the ground, so that she could go over rough grass or gravel. I wanted one that  looked elegant and attractive so she  would look good in it and people wouldn’t just look  and think, “look at that poor disabled woman”. I wanted them to think she looked elegant and pretty, the way I saw her, when she went out to her writers group or a party or if I could talk her into going out to a restaurant with me. 

The scooter took us on incredible adventures, to MRI appointments, to the theater, to movies, to musical concerts in the country. She used it many times when we had friends  over for gatherings or special events at our house. It took hours to get her ready to go out, a lot of work to get her up in the scooter and then adjust her posture and beautiful outfit until it was all just right. It was hard work to use the special aluminum ramps to get the  scooter into the back of the car after I had  gotten her into the front seat. I got special  wheels for it and a special cord and charging unit so it was always properly charged and  ready to go. I got special batteries for it.

I wanted very badly to create some happiness for her, even though she couldn’t walk or  dance anymore and was in constant pain. She mostly just wanted to stay in bed. But I  kept the little scooter always clean and ready for our next adventure. We could  do  something important. Something special. Something fun. Something that would make  her smile or laugh.

So you can see now that the scooter parked in the corner of the living room is not just a  scooter. It was hers. It was ours. It was our life together. It was…hope.

She died very early in the morning on December 26th, 2016, when she couldn’t breathe any more.  We had fought the cancer for 7 years. She stopped being able to walk in January of 2013.

The Little Blue Scooter

So to me, the little scooter was our friend. A loyal friend who was always there for us. It’s beautiful. It’s sacred.  To me, the little scooter is radioactive, glowing with untold secret memories of adventures together, of work and struggle,  of terrible courage and painful compassion, of desperation.

Of life.

Of death.

Around it is a glow of Pure Love.

PK Willey

PK Willey, Ph.D., is an American, a Gandhian scholar, author and entrepreneur, who has delved deeply into Gandhi's Earth Ethics. Willey seeks to enhance philosophical discourse around the world where globalization has altered ethical values, particularly in the USA. Willey finds Gandhi's ideas, thoughts, and example, to be invaluable in this effort. Currently, besides numerous articles and book projects,Willey is developing a new framework for qualitative research that employs Earth Ethics, guided by a Gandhian compass and Weibust's Transformative Paradigm.

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