“But that happiness was short-lived,” he said. The stroke eventually claimed his mother’s life. His eyes welled up. Looking at the scattered old items, I asked if he had started selling junk.
“No,” he said. After a pause, he continued, “I just didn’t want the happiness to end. After my mother passed, I filled the wheelchair with these old items to match her weight and pushed it as if she were still there.”
I felt tears well up as I listened. I imagined myself pushing a wheelchair with my mother in it. “Where is the wheelchair now? Perhaps I could borrow it, or buy it on an installment plan if you’re not using it anymore,” I asked.
He stood up and led me inside his house. “Look,” he said, squatting beside the wheelchair. “That cursed ambulance destroyed everything.”
A few days ago, he said, the wheelchair was hit by a speeding ambulance. It was thrown onto the sidewalk, crashing into a rich man’s gate. The frame was broken, one wheel bent nearly into a figure-eight.
“I had to carry it home,” he said, stroking the wheelchair. I squatted beside him, also caressing the now-junk wheelchair.
Translated from here.