Hear and read Vi’s Story (below)
Topic: Ableism (5)
She was suddenly flat on the floor. At first, she didn't know what had happened. But then she recognized her two bar stools, overturned in an awkward manner beneath her kitchen counter.
It was the bar-stool-high kitchen counter that drew complaints from Vi's daughter, Cindy, whenever she visited her mom at Walnut Grove Assisted Living.
"Why would you put bar stools in a senior living apartment?" Cindy once asked when she was visiting Vi. Vi thought the stools looked neat when they were tucked under the overhanging counter, three in a row.
Vi now knew what Cindy meant. Bar stools can be disastrous.
She remained on her back for a moment and then wriggled her right foot and then her left. No pain. She bent both knees. No pain. She rolled onto her right side with arms extended. No pain. And she could prop herself up with her elbows OK.
But she found that the muscles in her upper arms and her legs were just too weak to gain a standing position.
She tried propping her right leg into a 90-degree angle so she could use her right elbow as leverage to pull herself up with right hand on the counter, but that didn't work. She felt the muscles in right thigh melt away under the strain and wondered how she had let herself grow so out of shape.
Vi admonished herself for being so weak – the mother, after all, of two athletic daughters: Cindy, a cold-water swimmer, and Barb, a bicycle enthusiast. Maybe it was just the extra weight she had gained during the last few years. Was that keeping her down?
Her cell phone rang, but she couldn't answer because she had left it on the nightstand in her bedroom. And the medical alert device for calling the front desk during emergencies was also in the bedroom on a pillow. She always placed it there each night, thinking that was the safe thing to do. She considered it easy access whenever she needed the device.
Get to her bed. Now that was all she had to do. She could then call for help.
But how could she get there? Crawl? Her knees were OK as long she didn't put her full weight on them in a kneeling position. Just too painful.
She decided to shimmy herself sideways across the kitchen floor toward the bedroom. Short shimmy. Then rest. Short shimmy. Then rest. Her black slacks slid across the dark laminate flooring in the kitchen quite well, but, after shimmering for 15 minutes, she had to rest. She laid down on her back and felt the tight neck muscles and her upper back gradually loosen a bit from the tension she felt since the fall.
The carpeting in her bedroom presented a new challenge. That's where shimmering didn't work as well. Softer, yes. But her black slacks didn't move as easily over the carpeting as it did over the kitchen laminate flooring.
That's why it took another 30 minutes for Vi to reach her bed. She pulled the pillow from her bed and her medical alert device, a pendant meant to be worn around her neck, dropped to the floor where she could reach it.
She pushed the button once. A couple of minutes slowly passed. No response. Finally, after the third try, Gus from the front desk knocked on her front door and finally left himself in. He quickly retrieved a battery-powered sling for placing Vi into her easy chair in her living room.
“Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.” - Brené Brown
No broken bones. No sore muscles. Just a wake-up call for Vi. Now at 81, She realizes leaving her medical alert pendant on her bed pillow is not the wisest thing to do. She did not wear the device around her neck because it was always uncomfortable when it became wet while taking a shower. She now wears it on her wrist.
It was a small accommodation Vi considers just another step in a journey which has given her a new place in life. It's an orientation she would not have imagined as a 21-year-old while she was one of six cheerleaders for the Ball State Cardinals men's basketball team.
Then was then. Now is now.
Vi's takeaway tip from her story: Welcome the next phase in your life as an opportunity to learn and adapt to new realities.
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Here’s to mature-adult living!
Jim Hasse, ABC, GCDF retired, author of “52 Shades of Growing Together”
Weekly Stories About Insightful Aging
Accolade: “I am a psychologist, mother, wife, and I am looking for anything that can calm life. And beautify it. And the musicality of your words embellishes it …” - Valerie B.
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My thoughts about how to live the fourth quarter portion of my life have gradually evolved over the last six years – all from a writing perspective.
When Pam and I joined The Pillars of Prospect Park (PoPP), a senior living community in Minneapolis, in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, I thought there was potential in becoming a scribe for community residents, helping them to write and publish their memoirs.
The pandemic forced an artificial separation among our PoPP community members, so interaction was somewhat limited, but, during those difficult first months of separation, I kept hearing terrific personal stories about lives well lived from our residents.
That prompted me to review my own personal stories about living with a disability and to frame them as fiction from an older adult perspective with discussion questions to encourage reader participation – a gateway to memoir writing for readers.
Now, six years later, “52 Shades of Growing Together” still provides a meaningful platform for story sharing. And, it has evolved into an audio-and-text online resource for those who seek to understand and rise above ageism as well as ableism so they can continue to pursue a fourth-quarter life of transcendence and purpose.
I’m now sharing my stories with older adults so they feel less isolated, more understood, more appreciated and more included. Those are key parts of community building. And that means telling or listening to one’s story is not the end game. The goal of sharing personal stories is enhancing how the story teller or listener begins to feel about her or himself.
* When did you start living in the ‘now’ and thinking of your past as prologue?