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I had just extracted a promise that he would use his chair lift to get to his bedroom, his office, all the rooms that are inconveniently located on the second floor of his beloved farmhouse. The chair lift was installed after a hip injury a year ago, and in that year he had used it exactly twice--both times to move baskets of laundry to the second floor.
But aging, even for someone who is as amazing as my 96-year-old father, is inescapable.
I had spent a few days with Dad, and saw that his navigation of the stairs was becoming shaky. I had watched him pause on every step to grope for the next. And I knew his cardiologist had told him he should be using that chair lift.
"Dad, I'm going to ask you to do something hard. I want you to promise me that you'll use the chair lift," I said.
It really wasn't fair to do this. I knew Dad couldn't refuse direct requests from any of his five children, so we don't often present ultimatums. This was a promise, not a loose agreement that could be circumvented by "I'm sure she didn't mean ALL the time," or "She would want me to keep up my leg strength." But I pinned the promise down: The chair lift every single time up or down the stairs, with an extra lap at the wellness center to keep up the leg strength.
We had already seen the worst that can happen in a fall--fourteen years ago my mother fell just three steps down into the garage, but she suffered a traumatic head injury and died the next day.
So Dad promised, but he wasn't happy. When I hugged him good-bye as I left for home later that day I told him how sorry I was that he didn't want to do this, but that I loved him. He sighed and hugged me tighter.
"I love you, too," he said. "I'll get over it."
I thought of that moment when the text came from my brother last Tuesday. Dad had fallen in the garage and they were on their way to the emergency room. A few hours later we knew he had broken six ribs in his back, near his spine.
As I made the cross-state drive toward the hospital I was struck by how the landscape had changed in just the few weeks since I had last been there. Late August was still full summer, bright and glaring and hot. But now the sun is lower and fields and trees have taken on the bronzes and muted greens of fall. Road shoulders and ditches are riots of wild sunflowers, final splashes of color that are the annual gaudy announcement of imminent winter.
One week after his fall, Dad is doing shockingly well. His hospital status has moved to swing bed rather than acute care, and he surprised his physical therapist by acing several proficiency tests. He's in pain during transition (up and down from chairs, coughing) but otherwise comfortable. And he was delighted to have me with him, and had put his pique about the chair lift behind.
Now we're talking about what kind of accommodations need to be made to be able for him to stay at home rather than in an assisted living setting. We want him to be happy and self-directed, but we want him to be safe as well.
We are in a different season.
