Eight Raised Beds for Grandpa Emil

Thirty inches

I did not know anything about building garden beds for a man in a wheelchair, so I called the rehab wing and asked for Tina, the occupational therapist who had worked with Grandpa on getting in and out of the car.

She thought about it and said, “For someone working from a seat, you want the top edge somewhere around thirty inches. Narrow enough he can reach the middle from one side. And make him a path he can turn around on, Travis. Five feet at the ends, at least.”

I wrote it all down on the back of a work order. Thirty inches high. Three feet wide. Eight feet long. Room between them for a chair to roll and turn.

I figured I could fit eight of them in our half of the yard, in two rows of four, with a gravel path down the middle and around the ends.

We had just gotten our tax refund back. It was $3,100. Jenny had been saving it for new tires on the van and a week at the lake.

“The lake will be there next year,” she said. “Grandpa might not.”

Building them

I bought the cedar at the lumberyard on Main, 2x10s, three courses high on each bed with a 2×6 cap on top, laid flat, wide enough to rest a forearm or a coffee cup on.

Uncle Frank came over the second weekend, when he got back from Salina. He did not say much. He set the corners square with his big carpenter’s square, and once, while we were driving screws, he said, “Your aunt doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

“Eventually,” he said. “When it’s done. She’ll want to know it’s done right.”

We filled the bottom third of every bed with old fence posts and straw, the way Grandpa used to fill low spots, so it would rot down slow and hold water.

Then I had twelve yards of topsoil and compost brought in from the sand and gravel yard, and we wheelbarrowed it in until our backs quit.

Then I went over to the church and borrowed a wheelchair out of the loan closet, and I rolled myself up and down every foot of that path.

I turned around at each end. I pulled up beside every bed and reached for the middle.

Miles thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen, his dad driving a wheelchair around the yard. He rode on my lap for half of it.

Rosie named all eight beds. Bed one was Daisy and bed two was Mr. Pickles. I did not argue with any of it.