Advice from a small town girl

I just got back from a short stay in my home town.

I’m pretty sure I should have stayed longer, but I ran away. I usually do.

My dad fell last week, and the results weren’t particularly pretty.

When I arrived at his house Saturday afternoon, he was asleep on his bed. That was enough to alarm me. My dad has always been a pretty good napper (wherever he happens to be – on the porch or at the table) but if he’s in bed in the middle of the day, you know it’s serious.

After he woke, he made his way out to the kitchen, which is where I got my first view of the mess. Both of his arms were covered in gauze, with white burn stockings holding everything in place.

A few more words about my dad. He’s 89. He lives alone. Well, he actually lives with a dog, who looks a lot like an elongated ten-gallon bucket with six-inch legs, and a cat who resembles an extremely talkative small black box.

He has a purple walker that he inherited from my mother.

He has a machine that manufactures oxygen for him, and a very long tube so that he can access it wherever he goes in the house.

He has a system for keeping track of the myriad medications he takes for some of the myriad conditions he has accumulated throughout those eighty-nine years.

He’s an independent sort, who prefers to keep himself occupied by doing for himself.

Of course, maybe that’s just the view I prefer to take so I won’t feel guilty about not being there to help.

At any rate, he decided to move the sprinklers Friday, so out he went with his walker to do so.

Now, my dad lives in a one-level house. Unfortunately, that one level is four steps up from the front walk, and his children have not seen fit to install anything to improve access. Shame on us. There are two slightly shorter steps out the back door, so perhaps that’s how he went out. I actually don’t know. Shame on me.

The yard is surrounded by a fence which is mostly wire on a wood frame. The front gate is one of those swinging metal ones with a bit of scrollwork on top, and a catch that consists of two little things that, when down, are intended to hold the gate in place. When in place, they look a bit like a cow’s hoof, only smaller.

Apparently, they don’t work so well.

Dad gave a tug on the hose, and was counting on the gate to stabilize him.

It didn’t.

The gate gave, and down Dad went, into the gravel in front of the house. On his way down, the non-functioning gate latch added one final indignity. It ripped his left arm open from the base of his palm halfway down his arm. Then it took a couple of divots out for good measure.

None of his family was around that day. Fortunately, a neighbor was passing by and managed to call for help (but not before the aforementioned dog bit him.)

Even more fortunately, my home town is blessed with an ambulance and EMTs. They arrived and assessed and bundled Dad off to the emergency room about 40 miles away, where he was stitched and steri-stripped and medicated and eventually sent home.

It’s a blessing he didn’t break anything.

It’s a blessing we have good neighbors, who are willing to help even if the dog does bite them.

It’s a blessing we have small towns where people look out for one another.

It’s a blessing we are able to have emergency services in those small towns.

Now, as with every story, there’s a whole subtext to this that I’m not exploring. I may be exploring it in my heart, but not in the pages of The Odessa Record.

It’s not easy watching your family age. It’s not easy setting aside your own interests in order to do what’s best for someone else.

But who ever said it was supposed to be?