Good morning…
We enjoyed a slow, low-key day after my parents’ joyful Music Man performance at their senior living community in Ohio. Waking late. Talking over breakfast. Enjoying a relaxing morning together. Going to an appointment with the eye doctor. Grateful for good news, “Everything looks great.” Stopping by Dairy Queen to order an ice cream cake for my mom’s 86th birthday party on Sunday. In the late afternoon, my parents got gussied up and looked very content as I took their picture before their dinner date, a special meal honoring those celebrating June birthdays.
After they left the villa, I took a lovely, ninety-minute walk around the the grounds of the peaceful campus. As I returned to their home, a neighbor greeted me and said, “You might not know this yet, but your mother fell before dinner.” The friendly neighbor explained that she had seen my dad pushing my mom in a wheelchair, which was unusual. He let her know that my mom had lost her balance as she stood up from the table at the end of appetizer hour, suddenly falling onto her right side on the hard floor. People helped her up and into a wheelchair, and nurses came to check on her. Resilient and relational, my parents decided to stay for the celebration dinner.
I tried to call my dad. No answer. I talked to my sister to see if he had called her. No call. I ate my yummy leftovers on their villa’s back porch and waited for my parents to return home. My mom fell around 5:30 pm and my dad wheeled her into the house a little after 7:00 pm. As my dad walked back to get the car from the dining facility, my mom and I talked alone for a while, unpacking her disappointing story, her feelings and her fears. We were watching the nightly news together when my dad returned home. Together, they decided to call the ambulance for a transport to the emergency room. My dad and I rode separately, sharing thoughts, concerns, hopes.
When we finally were called back from the waiting room to join my mom, the doctor said she had broken her right hip and that she would need surgery as soon as possible. We talked through the experience with my mom and stayed to support her as she prepared for another hospital stay, the umpteenth time in the past two and a half years.
After listening on the other side of the curtain to painful preparatory procedures, my dad and I hung out with my mom for a while. Taking out her hearing aids. Getting her false teeth cared for. Kissing her several times on the forehead (me) and the lips (her lifetime love). As the morphine began to kick in, we left the hospital around 11:30 pm. Driving home, we talked through our exhaustion. We wondered aloud, “How many setbacks can one person push through?”
The Spirit of God will boldly rise up in both my mom and my dad, and as a family we will face this new challenge together. We thank all of you in this written word community for your loving prayers as we learn the next steps of God’s healing journey.
All that is great and powerful and glorious and victorious and majestic is Yours, O Eternal One. Indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth belongs to You. The kingdom belongs to You, O Eternal One, and You are the head of it all (1 Chronicles 29:11, VOICE).
…Sue…
