Ammi Midstokke: Mobility equipment of the generations
I’ve been getting an up-close preview of age lately by spending my free time in an assisted living facility, which is just like a normal living facility except the doors are wider and the Jell-O watered down. In a way, it reminds me of a coed college dorm where everything happens in silver-streaked slow motion.
And there is more knitwear. And hearing aids.
What is not any different is the ratio of rabble-rousers to riffraff or the unwritten social contract of comparing outdoor gear. “Outdoor” may only mean the carpeted hallway, but that by no means reduces the conversation about necessary amenities of walkers, wheelchairs or canes. At dinner time, a steady stream of traffic rolls its way to the dining room, then parked in the foyer – a row of red and black mobility toys with the occasional flare of personality. The latter is most likely to ensure the wrong walker doesn’t go home with the right resident and begin some neighborhood war in Hall B.
I am here not to be a bad influence on the locals by encouraging them to take their wheels outside (this may or may not have happened), but to enjoy dinner with a friend who has pulled one of the many unlucky lottery tickets of demise. In this case, Parkinson’s, which appears to be a medical term for “a slow robbing of dignity, one tiny ability at a time.”
These days, functions are hit or miss, as in I never know if she is going to hit or miss with the fork, so I swing by occasionally at meal times to make sure most of it gets in. I have noticed that, while she struggles to aim the vegetables, somehow the fine motor skills are much improved by dessert. I find this heartening as I plan on spending my final years subsisting primarily on ice cream.
What I also find promising is how rebellious these folks are. There is Margaret, who keeps standing up during dinner despite the stern warnings from staff. She rises to belch her compliments to the kitchen, but she’s from Jersey, so we expect no less. There’s a gentleman who has been told to slow down (not something you hear often there) when he makes laps around the tables with his high-end walker and greets everyone in sing song. And someone is always trying to escape. It is the only place I keep my car locked – for fear of a stowaway.
I’ve decided that this kind of rebellion is how parents get even with their once-adolescent teenagers. The escape artists and the I-don’t-need-my-wheelchair folks are the ones who risk being sent to a place with better security or seat belts. The smart ones do it when no one is looking, launching a clandestine shuffle from sofa to bed on their own, only to surprise the nursing staff later.
“How did you get here?” they ask.
“You put me here,” is the best answer, blamed on poor short-term memory. I can see by the glint in a few eyes that their primary source of entertainment is gaslighting the staff.
What I’m appreciating most about this exposure is bearing witness to this side of life. In America, we have a culture (and health care system) that doesn’t allow us to integrate our elderly into society effectively. From poor public transportation to a change in family systems to lack of resources at home, we’ve slowly exiled these precious humans to isolation among themselves. While I see them forming their own sweet and supportive communities, I can’t help but wonder how much those of us on the outside are missing.
I am gifted stories of escapes and refuge from distant places, of men falling in love as sailors long ago, the charming humor of generations past, the singing of lullabies I remember from my grandmother. To hear the stories, it takes a kind of patient inquiry, sometimes the disentangling of one memory from another, but the wait is worth the insight into these lives. They were the foundation upon which we have built ourselves and we still have so much to learn from each other. They are pioneers still.
Most of the time, we are not slowing down long enough to listen to them. Sometimes their words seem to no longer make sense, but maybe that is our limitation, not theirs. I see hurried, overworked families stop by and chat for a moment, nurses on schedules trying to keep people safe and get their jobs done, a rapidly declining population of visitors as friends cross over to the afterlife. I see people who still have so much to offer us, so many lessons in compassion and humility, and we’re not paying attention.
I don’t know when I’ll have to trade my mountain bike in for a walker with some studded tires, but I hope I give those nurses a run for their money. I hope I stage mutinies, sneak in pets, and organize protests against watered-down Jell-O.
Most of all, I hope I still have something to say and there is someone to listen. And should my words have left, I hope that I can still be seen.
Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com