The light bulb
January 14, 2010
He calls at 7AM to let me know that one of his light bulbs in the kitchen has burned out. “There’s only one left,” he says, “and if it goes I won’t be able to cook or get up and take my pills.” There is urgency in his voice. This is important. It’s an emergency. He needs me to come over and change the light bulb. All the time he is talking, I am thinking about Haiti and the thousands dead and stranded – without power, without telephones, without food, many without shelter. Most definitely, without light bulbs.
But this is a dire emergency for my father. Even when he was not frail and ninety years old, he did not know how to change a light bulb – left those duties to my mother and I. Oh, I’m sure he could change a bulb if it only required unscrewing and screwing, but this ceiling light is old-school – you have to climb up on a chair and unscrew four pegs that hold a heavy glass cover in place – and then the light bulbs.
So, I will go to his house and change a light bulb, today, at lunchtime. I will right my father’s world, which has come undone by the death of a single light bulb.