So I was feeling pretty smug this morning, trotting around the park, having dropped off the fat-loss plateau to the tune of another 1.5 pounds. Coming into the home stretch of Mile 3, I see a plump lady gamely running through the early morning heat. She has another 30 pounds to go, I figure.
Nya nya! I’ve only got 9.4 pounds left to shed!
Ahead of me I spot another woman, a large woman with a terrible limp — looks like she might have injured a hip that never healed up right, or maybe she has a birth deformity that’s nearly got her crippled. She’s a tough gal; she’s not giving up, but wrestles herself along the sidewalk with a twisting, rolling gait that must be exhausting to sustain for any length of time. My guess: 40 to 50 pounds overweight.
Thank God I don’t have to deal with that much fat!
As I come abreast to pass her, she pauses to gasp for breath, so we see each other face to face for the first time. And…my god!
It’s not a woman!
It’s a boy. He looks to be about 13 years old. Holy mackerel! The overweight probably derives from a combination of the injury or birth defect, mean classmates who make him feel inferior, and lots of computer gaming.
Baby boy, what happened to you?
Of course one doesn’t vocalize any such question. Instead, I smile vaguely and proceed around him at speed.
Forthwith I reach the end of the three-lap park circumnavigation and am flying up the feeder street toward home. At the corner, in front of the house that always has all the gay decorations at Christmas, I see a lady in a bright pink bathrobe, sitting on the ground by her garden.
She says something softly, and it takes a second to realize what she’s said is “help me!”
She’s fallen on the ground, evidently trying to get the newspaper.
I ask her if she’s hurt. She says she’s not, but would I help her get up.
She’s as tall as I am, but so frail and wasted she looks tiny. Under the bathrobe, she’s wearing an adult diaper that looks like it’s wet.
I take her hands while she struggles to get her feet under her. We try to get her upright, but it doesn’t work. She’s too heavy for me to lift, and she’s too weak to pull herself upright.
I say, “We’d better call 911.”
She says, “Get my husband.”
“Is he inside the house?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Chuck.”
I stick my head inside the front door and holler for Chuck.
No answer. The house is neat as a pin, spotless, and odorless. But other than that clue (this lady obviously couldn’t keep house at all, much less maintain a house and yard to perfection), there’s no sign of anyone else in the house. Maybe he’s still in bed.
I enter the home, still calling his name, and walk down the hallway toward the bedrooms.
Silence.
A closed door. I knock on it and call his name a couple more times.
Just as I’m thinking the woman is confused and only imagines her husband is still with her, he calls out from behind the door, “What is it?”
When I explain that his wife has fallen out front and that I’m not physically strong enough to lift her, he says he’ll be right there. Evidently this is not the first time.
A compact, fit-looking man, he appears to be in his early 80s. He hurries outside.
On the grass by the sidewalk he kneels beside his wife and caresses her face.
This is a man of extraordinary kindness, loyalty, and grace. He speaks quietly to her, and then he manages to haul her to her feet. The trick, it develops, is not to try to pull her upright by holding her hands, from the front, but to get behind her and lift her by her shoulders from the back. Again, she has to get her feet beneath her, a painful and difficult process.
Once she’s upright he holds her in his arms. She still isn’t walking — says she can’t balance upright but feels like she’s falling forward.
I ask him how else I can help them. He says it’s OK, that they’ll be all right.
Why do I doubt it?
As I walk away, I look up into the cloudless blue sky, symbolic abode of my personal deity.
Hey! You — the one with the omniscience and the universe and all that… What the hell are You doing back there? Either make it right or make it stop, will You?
The mockingbirds sing. The doves coo. The quail crow. The waiting sky resonates with construction and traffic.
If She has an answer, She chooses not to share it.
Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori.
sigh. That reminds me of when Mom would sneak out and sometimes fall. Once she turtled on her back and the only way to get her up was to hug her and lift. Weighing 40 lbs more than I, that was no easy feat but better that than when she’d pitch face forward, smashing in her new dental work she’d suffered through so much for. 🙁 Life. Can’t think about it too hard a lot of days.
Awful. Please let us die before that happens to us.
This lady seemed to have all her marbles (or at least most of them). You could see that her leg muscles were atrophied — my guess was she has some sort of wasting disease like ALS or MS.
You could see how much her husband loved her. God help them both.
What a sweet story…So many times we here of folks who throw in the towel when the going gets tough… But you have stumbled upon a true oddity in todays society…a man who keeps his word and took his vows seriously…”in sickness and in health”. I would only hope I would be as strong and caring as your neighbor in my old age …
Yes, he’s a good man and a true one. At least so it seems by that one meeting.
On the other hand…he could be misguided. If she’s falling frequently, sooner or later she’ll break a hip. That will add immensely to her suffering and probably will carry her away.
She might actually be better off if the two of them moved into a life-care community together, where nursing care would be on hand 24/7. He could still live with her and watch out over her, but she would have fewer reasons and fewer opportunities to to get hurt.
Clearly he still can care for himself. The house was spotless, the yard immaculately groomed, everything in order. Quite possibly he can afford to have assistants come in every day to help with these matters and with his ailing wife — that corner of the neighborhood his pretty affluent. But if this is not the safest strategy for her, one might wonder if he’s not being selfish in resisting moving out of his home.
Consider: He may figure she’ll die soon anyway and if he just hangs in there he can hold onto the house and then have a few more good years left — free of confinement in an old-folk warren. This might actually not be the best course for her.
So thankful you were there to assist them. There are so many older folks who don’t have anyone to check in on them – or even care about them. Too many of our older adult population are just forgotten. Thank you for stopping to help. For caring. Possibly you could stop in again to see how she is doing? Your kindness & caring will come back to you. Thanks for reminding us all to take time to look around, and help others if we can.
What a bittersweet story. I feel very sorry for the woman and it does seem sweet that her husband is taking such good care of her. We’re all going to need the help of others at some time in our lives. The need only seems to get greater as we get older.
That is just a ton of emotions all in one morning! It makes me a little nauseous to wonder how many people might have passed her by. As for the boy, I get so mad…if he is that young, then he has no choice but to eat what is in his house and it is his parents that are setting him up for that.
Just like when you have a 12 year old girl who is dressed inappropriately – she doesn’t have a job someone had to buy her that outfit.
Uh oh…judgment! Eeeek!! 😉
We don’t know why the boy has the terrible limp. An injury or birth defect could have incapacitated him to the point that he hasn’t been able to get adequate exercise. Or his parents may be obese, too. Or there may in fact be an endocrine problem at work.
Take a look at the ingredients in just about every processed product on the market. That includes not just frozen pizza and Costco tamales, but everything from frozen vegetables to canned fruits and veggies to condiments like mustard and mayo, and virtually all restaurant food. Almost EVERYTHING that is not a fresh, whole food off the produce or meat counter has added salt, added sugar, or both. And the meat counter is not sacrosanct: poultry is injected or soaked in saline solution, and so are those cuts of pork that come shrink-wrapped in plastic.
Most of the salt Americans ingest in their daily diets — on average, twice as much as is necessary or safe — comes from processed foods. We’re not even aware we’re consuming it. As for sugar, the NIH estimates the average American consumes 42.5 teaspoons of sugar a day, a good 25% of it from sources that are not obvious suspects. Cured meat, salad dressing, crackers, bread, soups, and any number of other products that are not sweet and not supposed to be sweet are loaded with sugar.
If you’re unaware of this and you’re not a pretty sophisticated shopper and you don’t like to cook from scratch and you don’t realize restaurant food is largely unhealthy, you just naturally are going to put on weight.
Man, I’m with you on the 12-year-old streetwalkers. And I blame the parents all the way through high school. On the other hand, I do recall how, back in the day when schools had dress codes, girls would roll their waistbands to bring their skirts up to miniskirt level. They still looked like kids, though; not like budding hookers.