Late For Supper

So my folks were late again to supper last night because they were waiting for each other at the library because it had air conditioning that we don’t, sitting on benches maybe 10 feet apart inside the “Fiction” section, pointed in opposite directions…dad having fallen asleep from one too many cinnamon cookies. I dislike summer, but I love fall. There’s the leaf jumping, apple crisp and college football, the pumpkin seeds, bulky sweaters, and gramma’s mashed potatoes. There’s the Fall guy and the Fall of the Empire, Niagra and Tacko Fall, that 7’6” basketball player. There’s Fall Out Boy, falling in love and Fallen, that great Sara McLachlan song. But would you believe it, some people don’t like fall, even though they keep doing it. Some are just clumsy like me, some like Janice fall because their husbands fail to adjust the bike seat. Others have cataracts or glaucoma or live in the icy north, but many are older folks with dementia or weaker bones or malnourishment or fall from the heat of the summer, for whom falls are as common as Uncle Bobby blaming me again for “deleting the internet” because I removed the shortcut to his browser. My dad has fallen a few dozen times – twice hospitalized – while my mother-in-law fell some 15 times after turning 80 that we know about, most of which have landed her in the hospital. What’s underappreciated about falls – the cause isn’t always what you think. We once studied 65 seniors who had fallen and needed inpatient rehab only to learn that some 39 of them had lost a spouse, never really grieved and became sedentary. They fell into their spouse’s habits - alcohol among them - and into a health spiral. So if you are in healthcare and see seniors or you are a caregiver on some level for aging relatives, take note not just of what’s happening inside their body but what’s going on inside their home, their brain and their heart.