Dignity's Pecularities

    Dignity.
    The image that comes to mind is a woman dressed in an elegant black blouse, a fuschia fabric belt, and a floral floor-length skirt.  Her gray hair is adorned with a matching long black scarf that was wound through her fine strands.  Her cheeks are patted with pink powder.  That is the surface of Mrs. Dignity.  Dignity's prescribed behavior matches her elegant gown.  A diamond ring on her ring finger makes clear, she has invested herself in a lifetime with a well-respected, hard-working man, who has provided her a comfortable life. They had the requisite three children.  Her children married.  They provided her with grandchildren for her doting.  She survived the normal ups and downs of any marriage.  Clearly, he had died, but, she did not die with him.  She rekindled an old friendship--her gentleman friend.  She has survived with a quiet air of confidence.  Her emotions are spent on her children--her grandchildren.  But, as to the challenges--the disappointments, the opportunities--life in her time did not afford, she said nothing.
    That is dignity's face in my stereotype's vision.
    I feel far from dignity's face.  Yet, something pulls at me--some vague, amoebic form that escapes my grasp, much less my firm hold.  What pulls at me is a stranger I have not met, or do not recognize, if I have met her.  What pulls at me is not for bravado's ego to claim.  At least, I don't think so.  Selfish? I may be pulled more for my self to claim.  I hope it is somewhere on the teeter totter between bravado and selfishness.  That is beyond me to know at this moment.
    Still ambulatory, I wheeled into an hourlong test drive--to test the power a chair will provide into a future whose physical boundaries I may know in this life's moment.  Perceptive rather than sensate on Myers Briggs scale, I exceed what is natural.  I write a checklist of my 730-foot condominium.  Where do I need to travel--where will I need to travel if I lose my ambulation---lose more than distance's stamina, which has been taken from me. I succeed in my inventory--my checklist for my hourlong evaluation.  I have itemized my travel needs, my task needs, and my needs for recreational pursuits in my home.  Unknown to my conscious self, I have created a three-part questionnaire for the evaluation.  First, what may I do with the power chair, now?  Second, what will I be capable of doing given practice.  Third, what will I need to ask others to do because it is beyond my capacity to do?
    I enter the evaluation with quiet confidence.  My checklist is in place.  It is in writing for my reliance.  My questionnaire is ready for the answering.  I am ready for the answers.  Or, so I think.  After all, this checklist--these answers--are at the heart of wheeling forward in my life with some semblance of interdependence.
     The checklist--the questionnaire--is at the heart of defining three terms in my future's essence.
     What will independence include?
     What will dependence demand of me to reconcile?
     How will the equation of interdependence be formulated?
     Some ask of any life's dilemmas, "What would Jesus do?"
     A different voice--a different face comes to mind.  She is in no competition with Jesus.  No.  A different voice--a different face--presents herself to me now.
    Six months before death, she sat.  Ravaged by breast cancer--by a radical mastectomy--long before medicine's advances, she sat in her manual wheelchair.  From the dining room table to the living room, her 14-year-old--her youngest--granddaughter wheeled her.  A loving, albeit overprotective life history together, she said, "I bet you never thought you would see your grandmother like this."  Though never voiced then, "No, I never did."  Now, lo these many years later, the answer of my own question's asking still is, "No, I never did."