The Fall
Life happens so quickly. You’re standing in the middle of the highway of life looking down the road toward the future, and on the glistening, heat-baked asphalt is the tiny, wavy, mirage-like image of a vehicle headed toward you. You know instinctively that the vehicle is your future. You‘re enjoying your daily snack of popcorn as you see this thing growing larger and larger. Every twenty-four hours the truck gets closer by one day (you decide it’s a truck because you’ll need something to haul all your stuff away). The truck looks big and then bigger and then it ‘s at its biggest, at which point it roars over you before you know what happened.
Where did that come from?
There are other surprises out there, things we think will never happen, things we think that we’re above needing to handle.
“I’ll never be like my parents.” Every day, however, you look more and more like them. You sound more like them each day. You act more like then each day.
“No, I don’t need help with my buttons,” you hear your father say. Then one day you hear yourself saying it. Within a few years, it becomes, “I do need help with my buttons … please.”
“Of course I’ll keep my job,” you say with confidence. After all, you’ve just been handed the management position for the choicest project in the company.
“Okay, I was laid off, but now I’m at this company that has never had a layoff. Job security worries are a thing of the past.” Disability retirements are not a thing of the past, though. They happen.
“As long as I keep running every day, I’ll be able to keep going.” One day I can run and the next day I can’t.
Ditto with tennis.
As far as the ignominy of using a walker, “I don’t need it.”They looked silly. I hoped I never needed one of those. I use one now when I think I need it – every morning, first thing; every evening, last thing; and any time I’ll be out and about for more than five or ten minutes. It’s becoming a permanent fixture, or at least until I advance to a wheelchair.
My balance is fine (in general). That general will turn into a major or perhaps a private in a while.
When I fall, I’m always able to catch myself.
I’m safe with my three-wheeled trike and won’t crash it. Well, just two weeks ago I crashed it.
Monday of this week, I was beginning to walk down our back steps that lead from the driveway down to a sidewalk at the back of our house. Little Winston (age two) was at the top step and held up his hand so that I would hold it as he stepped down. He took a step, then I took a step, but my foot caught on the lip of the lower step and my body careened out of kilter, losing balance. I remember thinking, “Let go of Winston’s hand,” and then I slammed face-first onto the sidewalk below.
Fortunately, Winston kept his balance and did not fall.
Usually if I fall, I hop back up injury-free, smiling or laughing and acting as if nothing happened.
This time was different. I began trying to move, but a sharp, searing pain ran up the right side of my neck to my eyes and temple. I was writhing in agony, my brain feeling that it was swelling and was about to explode. I had never felt throbbing in my head that bad. I took inventory of my body parts. Neck, okay. Back, okay. Arms and legs, okay. Chest and torso, okay. Head? Ouch. Teeth, not sure. I couldn’t feel them. Jaw, aching.
“Grampa swing Win’fon?” The voice of my young grandson Winston was soft and sweet, funny and soothing at the same time. He wasn’t demanding that I swing him. He was asking if I was still okay enough to be able to swing him.
My first ambulance ride
“Winston, go find Grandma, please.”
“Grampa play a’side (outside) Win’fon?”
“Winston, not right now. Go find Grandma.”
And he does. She was in the garage, not far from where I was lying. She arrived, learned what had happened, left and returned with old wash clothes. She patted the blood from my face (there wasn’t much) and asked me some questions. I felt I was fully or mostly cognizant, but my wife then called 911. The EMS team took a while to get there – they had been responding to someone else first – but they arrived and quickly hauled me to the hospital. Wake Cary took various measurements with a CT Scan. They determined I had no concussion, no breaks or fractures, and no brain bleed. All I had was mostly a bruised, swollen, battered face, jaws that weren’t aligned, and one incredible headache. I went to the dentist the next day, and she confirmed that my jaws and teeth were fine and should realign themselves in a few days when the swelling was gone.
Praise God that it wasn’t any worse than it was!
All this heightens the reminder to me that I, along with the rest of us folks in the lower half of the Fuel gauge, need to be careful and intentional in our movement.