Wednesday 16 November 2011

Tumble

It was eight thirty on a Tuesday night. I stared at my laptop screen blearily. If only I could feel this sleepy when I needed to sleep, and not when I was up against a deadline. After weeks of intermittent insomnia, I was constantly tired and I just wasn’t being as productive at work as I should. As a result, I often found myself bringing work home just to get it done on time. As the screensaver appeared on my laptop screen for the third time, I decided I would have to take a catnap before I could get any more work done. I set the alarm on my cell-phone for nine thirty and crawled into bed.
I could hear the faint sounds coming from the TV downstairs where my mother was no doubt watching one of her favourite soaps. My father would be home soon from his evening prayer session. I felt a pang of guilt as I thought about how little time I had spent with him over the weekend.
Over the past few years, I had been watching my father slowly deteriorate physically, following his second debilitating stroke. He used a walking frame to move around and was relatively independent but getting up the stairs to his bedroom was now becoming his biggest challenge as he couldn’t always lift each leg high enough to take the next step. The doctors had spoken to us about what they called ‘tough love’. As tempting as it was to do things for him and help him up the stairs, we were encouraged to allow him to try to do things for himself. It meant being patient and allowing him to get up the stairs in his own time. And although it was now taking him much longer and was much more effort for him, he always managed to do it on his own.
As he was also having increasing difficulty walking, he would sometimes lose his balance while moving around the house on his walking frame, and end up in a sitting position on the floor. Both my mother and I would be rather alarmed each time this happened as my father was now seventy. But he would look up at us with a sheepish grin on his face, not unlike a child’s, and simply ask us to help him up. He never let his disability get to him. However, once he was on the floor, it was quite the task to pull him to his feet again as he was not a slight man and didn’t have much strength from the waist down.
I briefly debated waiting for my father to get home so I could chat with him for a while but the temptation of sleep was too sweet to resist at that point. I pulled the warm duvet over me and almost immediately drifted off into a deep, dream-filled slumber.
After what felt like only minutes, I heard my mother’s voice calling me. Surely it wasn’t nine thirty yet. Had I slept through the alarm? I just needed five more minutes. I felt my mother’s hand on my arm, nudging me, as I heard her call my name again. This time, I heard the urgency in her voice. I bolted up in bed and looked at her, my eyes searing from the light. She stood beside my bed, her eyes wide with fear and tears that streaked the sides of her face.
“What’s wrong, Mama?” I shrieked in panic.
“Dad fell… tumbled down the stairs…” Her words, uttered in between gasps of air as she hyperventilated sent me into hysteria. I jumped out of bed and shoved my mother out of the way as I flew toward the stairs. I heard my mother sobbing behind me as she followed me. As I rounded the corner of the flight of stairs, I saw him… lying motionless a few feet from the foot of the staircase. My heart stopped. I tore down the remainder of the steps, holding back the wails that threatened to escape from my mouth as I feared the worst.
I stepped over his stationary body and crouched beside him so that I could face him, not sure what to expect. His eyes were open but they stared blankly ahead at the skirting board at the base of the wall. “Daddy?” I whispered, as a tear escaped down my cheek. At the sound of my voice, my father looked up at me, an expression of utter confusion and fright on his face. “I lost my balance. I don’t know how it happened.” His voice was steady but the expression on his face remained. A wave of relief came over me as I quickly composed myself and wiped my cheek. “It’s okay, Daddy. Everything’s going to be okay. Did you hit your head? Where are you hurt?”
It was nothing short of a miracle. He had not hurt himself seriously and nothing seemed to be broken.
It took me about twenty minutes to get him to a standing position, all the while pleading with him to let me take him to the hospital. But whilst my father’s physical form might have worsened, his stubbornness was just as strong as ever. I helped him up the stairs as carefully as I could, my mother trailing behind me, a lot calmer than she had been. With her help, I got my father into bed and asked him for the umpteenth time if he was certain that he wasn’t hurt. His words were reassuring but I could tell that he was still shaken by the incident. I stroked his face and kissed him on the forehead before I turned around and bolted out of the room. I made it to my room just in time as the tears came hot and furiously down my face, my body convulsing beyond control…