Latest News

My mother loved going to Costco, but cancer was slowly destroying her body, and she became dependent on a wheelchair for mobility. Regardless, she was determined to stay active for as long as she could. So, Mom and I devised a way for her to go to Costco. I would put her in her wheelchair and find a flatbed cart. She would push the flatbed cart, and I would push her. It took a little practice, but before long we were like a well-oiled machine! I pushed her, she pushed the cart; I stopped, she stopped! We even got the turns down smoothly.

One day, I parked the van on the side of the Costco building rather than in front as I usually did. After our shopping was done, we started to leave the building. In order to return to where the car was parked, we had to make a sharp left turn, avoiding the large columns in front of the building. However, the sidewalk in front of the building and around the side was on a slant. (Funny, I had never noticed that before!) As I attempted to turn her wheelchair, Mom tried to turn the flatbed cart. However, because of the incline and the weight of the cart, she was unable to hold onto the cart, which began to roll forward and into the parking lot! As I saw this happening, I let go of Mom’s wheelchair to recover the cart. Mom’s wheelchair came precariously close to one of the columns and began going into the parking lot, too! So I let go of the flatbed cart and grabbed the wheelchair again. Then the cart continued to proceed into the packed parking lot once more. Unfortunately, no one except for my mother and I seemed to notice that she and my groceries were about to become Chop Suey!

Finally, in one last desperate act of super-heroism, my left hand grabbed my mother’s wheelchair and my right hand grabbed the flatbed cart. I just hung there, torn between the two, until some nice man finally noticed our predicament and offered his help. Once she got over the shock of the near-accident, my mother started to giggle. She said, “It’s good to know how much I am worth—a flatbed cart full of Costco products!”