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It's 6 a.m., gray and still. Thelma Wright, a sparrow-sized woman of 77, sits on the back step watching the light arrive. Overhead two purple finches circle.

For early industry, Thelma often beats the birds. Up at midnight to care for her husband, Wilbur, she seldom drops back to sleep. Instead she scrubs the bathtub or dusts a few shelves. In the ten years since Wilbur's stroke, she's had little time for chores in daylight.

Indoors, there is a bit of sparrow in her movements, a plucky hip-hop that reveals arthritic joints. On the kitchen counter, the coffee machine gurgles. Thelma peers at it through her thick-lensed glasses. By instinct more than sight, she navigates the familiar kitchen spaces, cupboard to refrigerator to drawer, mixing Wilbur's strawberry drink, carrying his bran flakes and white-scalloped bowl to the table.

When Thelma enters the front bedroom, the clock on the mantle ticks toward seven. In the post bed, her husband's breath puffs in-out, in-out, his eyes closed.

From an apparent sound sleep, Wilbur says, "I'm awake."

Thelma smiles.

Wilbur loves to surprise me. When we were newlyweds out grocery shopping, he'd ask if I liked this or that or the other. Then it got so each week when he'd empty the bags, he'd say, "Here's a little surprise for you." It didn't have to be a whole lot, maybe a small box of candy or a can of something. But it meant so much.

Two years ago at Christmas time I came home one evening, and here in the living room sat this darling red Flyerwagon. Wilbur knows I love wagons—buckboards, flatbeds, any kind. I have a miniature collection I call the Livery Stable. So when Wilbur saw an advertisement, he had our son get it as a surprise. I think I'm the only grandmother in the world that got a red wagon for Christmas.

"I'll get your washcloth and eyedrops," says Thelma.

One-handed, Wilbur rubs the wet warmth over his face. Since 1961, when his left arm was severed in an industrial accident, Wilbur has done everything one-handed. Then six months ago, another vacancy: Poor circulation reduced his right foot to pain so incessant the leg was amputated. Home from the hospital, Wilbur looked himself over. On the left, one leg, paralyzed; on the right, one strong arm, one stump, plus five phantom toes that still burned at night like a row of blue flames.

"There really isn't much of me left, is there?" he said one day.

"Hey, buddy," replied Thelma, patting his chest. "The best part is right here."

No quitters here
Washing done, Thelma fishes a white tube sock from the armoire, peels one from Wilbur's foot and rolls on the clean one. Both are cropped at the ankle to eliminate the ring of elastic that would slow blood flow. "Ready to get up?"

Wilbur nods.

How to move the inertia of paralysis, that is the problem. Enter the Hoyer lift, a machine that makes a workable marriage of chrome and nylon, strength joined to flexibility. Via the Hoyer, a featherweight like Thelma can move mountains.

	Wilbur and Thelma need each other the way air needs wind and wind needs air.

"One of these days," says Wilbur, "I'm going to get up and give you a ride in that machine." He reaches for a rope handle attached to the opposite side of the bed and rolls onto his side. On the sheet Thelma spreads a nylon mesh sling and rolls Wilbur back on it. Twice she travels the double-bed width to straighten the sling, peering through the glaucoma that tunnels her vision, then rolling the huge horseshoe base of the Hoyer under the bed. Over Wilbur's head, two double chains swing from the A-shaped boom, faintly tinkling.

Wilbur's eyes follow Thelma the way iron filings follow a magnet. She treks around the bed again, hooking the chains into four eyelets on the sling, two at his shoulders, two at his hips. As Thelma pumps the hydraulic lever on the hoist, her husband's shoulders rise from the bed like a slow updraft.

Nowadays Wilbur and Thelma need each other the way air needs wind and wind needs air. She is his movement. He is her reason for moving.

"You okay?"

Wilbur is rocking six inches over the bed, his eyes fastened on Thelma. "You haven't dumped me yet."

"No, sir, after 33 years I'm not about to dump you."

There's never been a time when I've said, "I'm going to give up right here." It doesn't take much to say, "I quit." It takes a lot more to say, "I'll try." It's a privilege, really, to see into things that can make you desperate. You get a whole different perspective on life.

Some days are so hard, but it's neither one of our faults. My gimpy leg acts up. Nearly everything I pick up, I drop. Or we go through a stack of Depends. If I get overly tired and crabby, I'll say, "Wilbur, I'm grumbling, but not at you." Lots of times when I have a day like that, I'll be in the kitchen washing dishes with the radio on. I'll hear a beautiful hymn and stop dead in my tracks and listen. The tears roll and I say, "Thank you, God! That's a whole day's blessing."

Good music can absolutely heal my inner feelings. Sometimes Wilbur will say, "Thelma, go play the piano." After music, I love nature. In the spring, even the green weeds look good. And the purple finches, you can't discourage them. Cold or hot or humid, the birds sing.

Your smile's worth it
Four casters swivel backward over the hardwood floor as Thelma leans her 95 pounds, wrinkles and all, into 200 pounds of man and machine. Once Wilbur's leg hangs free of the bed, she tugs the Hoyer parallel to the bed, then rolls his wheelchair under the sling.

Satisfied with the match—wheelchair to body—Thelma begins pumping down to engage the relief valve. Slowly, Wilbur and the winch descend. It's a tricky task to move a body this out of balance. Today everything stays straight.

"You need to be an octopus to operate this machine." Thelma pulls the chains free of the eyelets, then pushes against his knee to settle him into the wheelchair. Around his foot she loosely knots a humongous red rubber band and hands him the loop. It's Wilbur's job to hold his foot away from the moving wheel.

In the bathroom, Thelma shaves and grooms her husband. Together they arrive at the kitchen table in a swirl of scent—hot coffee and cool aftershave. Wilbur shoves the right wheel lock into place. Thelma locks the left.

Wilbur has one arm he can use, and that's a wonderful arm. He gives the best backrubs. Before his stroke, he could go out the back door carrying more than I could with two hands. He'd grease the car and I'd pump the grease gun. He cleaned the gutters while I stood at the bottom of the ladder and said a prayer. He's raked acres of leaves with one arm.

Wilbur loved to tinker in the garage. He'd work for half an hour on a little screw. I'd probably pick it up and throw it through the window, but he's not a slammer. He built an air compressor from scratch and that vehicle I called Chester, the Moon Buggy. He made a device on the steering wheel of his car so he could flip the blinker with one finger. That was a pretty good wrinkle. And it worked.

Over bran flakes and milk, Thelma and Wilbur link fingers and pray in unison, "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done … " Halfway through, tears track down Wilbur's cheeks.

Two quiet cups of coffee later, he says, "If you'd known all this—how bad it was going to be—maybe you wouldn't have said 'I do.'"

Thelma looks at him through double-ringed lenses. "You know something? Just to see your smile and those blue eyes looking at me, it's worth it all. I wouldn't change any of it—except maybe one thing. If I could take six months of the year—divide it up with you—I'd take your place and let you switch with me."

Thelma would do that. She'd trade her gimpy hip and glaucoma for five phantom toes and five phantom fingers, plus a stroke. Then every morning Wilbur would bring her a warm washcloth, put a clean sock on her foot, and wheel her to a table set good enough for guests. In the middle of the night, he'd dust the red Flyer wagon.

For six months, the Hoyer lift wouldn't lift a thing. Wilbur would move like wind, carrying Thelma, light as air, to the wheelchair. Sometimes just for fun he'd lift his tiny wife with one arm tied behind his back, but he'd never dump her. Early mornings while Thelma slept, he'd tinker a little. Going to the garage, his feet would leave pairs of prints on grass so damp it would feel like walking on water.

After checking with relatives, Barbara Seaman, Thelma and Wilbur's niece, added this postscript: "On the last day of October in 1996, Wilbur called to Thelma, 'I think I'm dying. You'd better call 911.' Then he added, 'Now you can get some rest.' In a few hours he was gone. Thelma sat with him in ICU, holding his hand and talking him through the dying process to the last breath. 'It's okay, baby,' she said over and over. 'Jesus is holding your hand.'"

Condensed from Marriage Partnership(Winter 1995), © 1995 Barbara Seaman. Used by permission.

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