Marjorie's Trip To The Rehab

Five days before Christmas my 94-year old mother fell in her walk-in closet and broke her hip. She likes to refer to the break as the upper femur, which technically it was, but the surgeon, who tinkered with rods and pins and put Marjorie back together again, referred to it as a broken hip. I also tend to tell others that her injury was to the upper femur, as a nod to what’s important to her. After all, broken hips are a very common injury to the elderly, but a break of the upper femur is just darn special. Marjorie likes to be special. She generally relies on her candy-apple red walker, the type with the seat that pulls up to reveal a handy wire basket that holds the necessities, to right her as she navigates her way through her house and daily tasks, her life a series of pitfall avoidance. However, on this particular morning, she left the hot rod behind and tackled the closet on her own, taking down a perfectly ironed pair of pants and attempted to wriggle one leg through the appropriate pant leg while balancing precariously on a leg unwilling to meet that challenge. Down she went, grabbing for the mirror, which was unfortunately leaning unattached against the closet wall, which also came tumbling down, leaving a healthy cut on her elbow in its wake. Her Life Alert necklace, which theoretically should be her lifeline to help in a scenario such as this, was left at bedside, as it usually is, leaving my mom, Marjorie, in a heap on her closet floor, unable to move or call anyone except her dog Millie, a schnoodle of the first order. Naturally, Millie was concerned but unable to help as a first responder. An hour later, Marjorie’s caregiver, who lives on the two-acre property in a separate cottage, came to look in on her charge and help with some of the morning tasks and discovered her sprawled out on the off-white carpet in the closet with Millie sitting by her side in steadfast attention.....to be continued