Slipping through the fingers

Sometimes, the image comes unbidden to my mind's eye.

It's a white hand in the half-light, fingers curved slightly and clawing.

It's Demeter's hand. Oh gawd. Oh gawd.

Demeter fell.  This was twenty weeks ago, and I still get blindsided by flashbacks.

We were nearly home, so nearly home, walking back from one of her medical appointments as the weakened sun dipped towards the horizon in mid-January.  Demeter was plodding along with her walker, stopping to rest her tired shoulders.  I suggested she might like to rest in the bus shelter that we were passing.  I had kept close to her shoulder during the walk, but now she stepped beyond me, aiming for the resting place. 

It seemed to happen in slow motion.  These things do, I guess.

Her walker seemed to glide out of her grasp.  And she reached out in a straight incline, and her body crashed into the pavement, seeming to bounce slightly, her left arm stretched out above her head. And I saw her left eyebrow blowing up like a slate-grey balloon.

And she wouldn't answer me.

And her eyes were wide, staring, and white.

People gathered, giving advice:

"Leave her."

"Get her on her side."

As I bent over her, her hands, white and grasping, reached out in staccato.  As I turned to answer somebody, I felt her fingers digging into the backs of my legs.

Someone called 911.  I fumbled for my phone:  "No, I know you've called, but I have to get my husband.." And I couldn't get my phone to work; I called Demeter's landline by mistake.  Later, I turned on her answering machine, and heard the nightmarish babble of voices, with my voice saying, "She's not responding; she's not responding..."  I meant my mother lying on the pavement, not answering me, staring blankly.

I managed to reach the Resident Fan Boy, struggling to describe where we were - so close to home, only two blocks away.  Someone, seeing my confusion, gave me the address and cross streets.

I stood behind Demeter, who insisted on sitting up, so I could support her back.  She said something was pressing down on her head; I realized it was me, bending over.  I straightened up, as the ambulance arrived, followed shortly by the Resident Fan Boy, who had strode up a back street.

The paramedics thought she had broken her arm, but changed their minds as they examined her.  It was a dislocated shoulder.  "Why am I going to hospital?" Demeter asked as they bundled her away.  They explained, and re-emerging to ask me about medications, told me that she had asked again.

I know something about brain injury.  I watched numbly as the red lights whirled and flashed, realizing I couldn't go with her, in this time of pandemic, or even visit.

The RFB and I dropped off her walker, purse, and coat at her apartment.  At home, I made phone-calls.  

I shook for two hours.

That was twenty weeks ago.  The shape of our daily lives has changed.  Demeter was home in three days, and slowly finding ways to claw back her prized independence.

Her neighbour across the hall had a fall about a month ago and spent three weeks in hospital, as his mailbox remained unemptied.  The mum of a friend up-Island fell before Christmas, breaking an already replaced hip, plus three breaks below the knee.  There was talk of amputation, and she's still in a wheelchair.

Demeter is now doing short walks around the block on her own.  I go in to prepare her meals and do her laundry.  Things could be a lot worse - and probably will be, at some point.  

Not yet.

But this is why I haven't written in a while.