Jeanne, the old woman from across the street, pounded on our door. She said she needed help lifting her daughter off the floor. I walked over with her as she explained that she had tried and tried but wasn't strong enough to pick her up. I walked in to her small, tidy house and saw a pair of twisted, bony legs sticking out of a blue dress on the kitchen floor. Grunts as the legs shifted around. Jeanne, who has Alzheimer's disease and is normally incapable of carrying on a conversation, suddenly became very informative. "You have to get behind her and lift her up from under her arms." The daughter was not aware of me but responded to her mom's voice with grunts. The daughter's hair is carefully combed and she appears well cared for. Her face had misshapen features but no knowledge of watching decades go by from inside a wracked and twisted body. Here and there lurks a normally formed Sigourney Weaver face peeking out from under it all. I picked her up under the arms and plopped her into the wheelchair as I would transfer a baby to a crib. To adjust her, Mom braced herself for some lifting and daughter's bony arms wrapped around mom's shoulders for support as they had practiced for the past 45 years. Order triumphed, the cubist moment past, Mom seemed to have everything in hand.
Five minutes later there was another knock on the door, "I need help picking up my daughter, she fell on the floor!" Oh hell. The woman was breathing heavily and sweating and not making sense. She picked up some bark from the sidewalk and told me I should put it in a safe place. In the kitchen, daughter was piled up on the floor because she had slid out of the wheelchair. Jeanne could not explain how it happened. Was she forgetting some key step in securing the wheelchair? After untwisting her into the same position I found her in the first time, I picked her up and put her back in the wheelchair and left while forcefully refusing the halloween candy that Jeanne offered me. At some point, Jeanne is no longer going to be able to care for herself or her daughter and I guess I will be on the lookout.
11:58:28 PM 
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