This Week in Falls Prevention Class

I am taking a falls prevention class.

There are six students, an instructor, and an assistant. We talk about falling risks, how to make our houses safer, how to get up after a fall, and how to maneuver the world without crashing and breaking everything, not the least of which are our bones. Falls can put you into no man’s land, I know that much for sure.

At the end of the table, on the other side, is a 92-year-old woman who wears a white furry hat and a knit cardigan sweater with a big hole in the elbow. She has a bulge over one eye which could be from an injury or could have always been there, I don’t know, and she sits very pleasantly with her hands folded in her lap. She pays attention. She’s not dotty.

She’s there because her neighbor, the retired pharmacist who is also taking the class, insisted. He visits her every day and decided that she needed to work on preventing falls. So does he, since he is a self-confessed serious faller, his falls off ladders instead of mere slips on the ice. The retired pharmacist is extremely thin and bony. He wears his khaki pants, at least two inches too big around the waist, cinched up with a belt. He has something to say about everything. Normally, this would be irritating but somehow, I think because he has a forthright and well-meaning face, he is entertaining and has become, at least to me, somewhat dear.

He gets up when it’s exercise time to make sure his furry hatted neighbor pushes her chair back enough. That she stands on her toes but does not rock and that she does her leg lifts with her toes pointing up. The pharmacist’s wife, a former nurse, watches all this. She is plump and very soft, in looks and demeanor, and I admire her for having spent years with her pharmacist husband who has a comment, observation, or critique for every occasion. Sometimes she gently rolls her eyes, mostly, I think, because she thinks the rest of us think she ought to. We don’t, however. He’s new to us so we are still thinking he’s somewhat dear.

At the break, we eat healthy snacks. The furry hatted woman begins to cough, and the coughing doesn’t stop. The instructor waits a while, watches while the woman drinks water, and then starts to cough again. The instructor waits a few seconds and then begins with part two of the day’s class. The furry hatted woman keeps coughing. The pharmacist’s worry is palpable. He decides that the glass of water that the woman already has is not adequate and so he gets a new glass, full to the top, which he sets down in front of her. He is so obviously there in our class and maybe on the earth to take care of his neighbor, something that is fascinating to watch and oddly awe-inspiring.

Old people are so interesting.

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Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash