In the film ‘Remains of the Day’ the aging father of the butler played by Anthony Hopkins is, as we say, beginning to lose it. The man is also in service, so the ‘it’ that he loses is his servant’s control. He trips and drops something. His nose runs. The man’s professional days are numbered. And in an era when retirement plans weren’t even a concept, his nonprofessional days do not exist. He has nothing. He is nothing. Most poignantly, we see him retrace a stumble. How did he trip? The man walks through it again, looking down, searching for whatever floor anomaly threw him off his servant’s stride.

I am doing something similar these days, endlessly wondering what small error seems to make the difference between sitting up in bed and…not. When I lean to the right the procedure works much better. This also places me over my paralyzed side, otherwise known as my perilous side. The maneuver demands high alertness. Note that this isn’t an issue with Jane around. Meaning the real issue is independence. Can I get out of bed on my own?

Like the aging butler, I am constantly retracing my steps. When it’s hard to get out of bed or I can’t get out of bed at all…what is the problem? Age is the problem. And although age is inevitable, if one is lucky, it doesn’t feel that way. To me it feels like a worsening of my disability. Things were bad enough. Now they’re worse. And even this doesn’t make an enormous amount of sense. For when I lived in San Francisco the first time, the mid 1970s, I used to limp up and down my neighborhood’s shopping street with a crutch. It has all gone downhill from there.

So things have reached a new stage. And as an actor on that stage, what is the extent of my new role? After all, I took the show on tour to Northern Minnesota last week. And it must be said that I got out of bed each morning. There were some new parameters. One has to do with equipment. The use of special devices. One is my left shoe. Wearing a comfortable slip-on shoe at night…no one’s idea of how to sleep, I know…helps. I found that with a shoe on I could dig my heel into the hard Minnesota camp mattress, for extra maneuverability. Also, the camp staff had provided a rope tied to the foot of the bed. I requested this, thinking there would be something to grab so I could lever myself into a sitting posture. I was right. It worked.

What really worked, of course, was having people around. Just around. Someone I could call. Which means less independence. Which means reality. Which also means not panicking. The latter being somewhat impossible to prevent, but not entirely impossible to control. Breathing techniques can help.

In short, the new reality is that I am at times somewhat trapped in bed. But if I’m willing to take a chance…to rely on other people and some standard-issue equipment such as shoes and rope…well, maybe it can be done. Traveling on my own, for example. Which will never really be on my own. But that’s how it is. Acceptance is everything.