We have a member at Winslow who suffered a stroke. One of our community members, Allen, wrote a poem that talks to that. Please read to the end (it is worth it):
One day my friend, the wife of my friend,
phoned to say she could use some help.
My friend had slipped out of his wheelchair
onto the floor and she couldn't get him back into it.
And could I maybe find some more neighbors as I came?
I went along, knocking on doors on my way.
I found Barbara and David who interrupted their cooking to come.
When we got to my friend's place Roger was there already.
So we five (counting friend wife) circled my friend.
He was on his back by the bed and he looked up at us.
We kicked ideas around with my friend.
David suggested two of us could make a cradle with locked arms
under my friend's back and knees. We pushed the bed away a little.
David and I knelt to try making the cradle.
David tried a lift and I heard him say,
"Hoo, boy, not sure I can do this."
And I tried the weight and thought what David said.
And Roger said, "I think a couple of us can lift under his shoulders,"
And wife friend said, "I can lift his feet."
We groped around under my friend and he moaned with pain.
Then David found my arm under my friend's back
And found my other arm under the knees and we locked up.
Then all at once my friend became lighter than air.
He began to rise rather quickly and I stumbled a little
to keep up with him and the rest as we rose to our feet.
Then Barbara wheeled the chair under my friend
and the rest of us lowered him into it
and his wife said, "I feel like I'm going to cry."
And so did I. Days later I wake in the dark
going over it in my mind. For one thing, there was the look
in my friend's eyes, the steady quality of his voice, his wanting
to link his good right arm to me somehow.
My friend had a very firm grasp of something
but I don't think he knew one bit more than I did
that he was about to become incredibly light.
Next there was my firm belief that my friend was the help-ee
and the rest of us were the helpers—that's what became the joke.
It was a thin sheet of ice over the cold pond of dread,
dread of the day this will be me, my eyes looking up
at the blurred circle of helpers—some of my muscles still strong
but the control that I thought was mine gone.
As I lie awake swinging around and around that moment,
I hear the question I thought I couldn't bear.
Why would anyone come when it's I who am calling?
In that second out of time the answer just became obvious:
We need to be lifted up. Our role there is just an illusion.
-Allen