From what I can tell, in just the few minutes I've spent watching her at work, the physical therapist is everything you'd want in one - patient and positive, even cheerful, experienced at working with the old and infirm, empathetic but not a push-over. The PT wants something out of her patient today, and she's determined to get at least some of it.
"Come on now, Louie," she tells the old man, as he lay on his bed on Saturday morning. "Let's do leg lifts, and let's bend those knees."
The old man has been through hell recently, a streak of health problems that have taken their toll in energy and attitude. Throughout the many years I've known him, Louie has been vigorous and gregarious, never betraying self-pity, almost always in fine health and mindful of it.
Now, he's the focus of attention as all around him, relatives and the staff at the nursing center, want him to recover from the pile-up of health setbacks that have left him understandably melancholy and quietly angry; he doesn't like that people have to make a fuss about him.
"Come on now, my Louie," the PT says, helping bend his right leg and flex his ankle.
He needs to keep the blood circulating, needs to use the muscles, needs to get up from the bed and take a walk, even if it hurts.
And he needs to do this correctly so that he doesn't fall again.
He needs to turn his body the right way, get into a sitting position, then stand - all without leaning on the walker by his bed.
"You see that," the PT says, shaking the aluminum walker. "That's not something you can lean on to get up. It's not sturdy."
She wants him to place his hands on the bed and push off, "nose over toes," and then, once erect, use the walker to travel. But it's a slow process, getting Louie to do this. He groans and whimpers a bit because his back hurts. The whole time, the therapist is patient, polite and just persistent enough, until she gets what she wants.
Here we are again, baby boomers watching the Greatest Generation struggle through aging and illness. Here we are, off the fast-moving highway of our busy lives, sitting by the bed and providing a little company, a sympathetic ear, an encouraging word. Many of us will be here someday.
You can't help but think that as you watch the old man struggle through his exercises, and you can't fight the melancholy that sets in. You accept it; it's human to do so, to quietly curse the passage of time and wish we could all be forever as we were - vigorous and gregarious, healthy and full of the future.
