All Fall Down

I took a bit of a tumble this week. One minute I was strolling with purpose homeward bound along our street and the next minute I was face down on the tarmac. I know I was preoccupied in thought before I went down, as I was peering through an upstairs window opposite, lights already on but curtains not yet drawn. I was reflecting on how on a trip to Amsterdam in 2019 we wandered down a similar residential street looking in several such windows admiring the décor and furnishings. Our friends who live in the Netherlands assured us it was a perfectly acceptable pastime in early evening, but I have no way of knowing if this is universally true or just something they just like doing.

Anyway, there I was thinking about what I might see as I approached the window and the next thing, I was lying prone on the pavement. I was not aware of tripping or stumbling, feeling dizzy or blacking out, but there was no warning and no apparent passage of time between being upright and being flat on my face, no sense of falling at all, which is slightly alarming. Alarming at just how quickly things can change and sometimes in ways we can’t begin to imagine. One minute we are sailing along not a care in the world and the next moment our lives have been turned upside down… quite literally in my case.

As I retrieved my glasses from the road my first thought was “I hope no one saw that” quickly followed by “I can’t be badly hurt if that’s all I’m worried about”. I gingerly sat up and from there got back on my feet, albeit a little wobbly, I collected up the scattered basket of goodies I was carrying and made my way the final 150 yards home as I thought about falling. When do we stop falling over, something we do all the time as small children when we just bounce back up again, and when does it become having a fall? I don’t feel frail or elderly so I think I just fell over. And having walked the same path again today I noticed the appalling state of the footpath, cracked and crumbling, so it is no wonder I tripped when I wasn’t paying attention. Fortunately, I wasn’t badly hurt, just a bit shaken up, bruised and grazed but mostly feeling like an idiot.

To be fair I do have previous form and it got me thinking that maybe I fall over more than average for someone my age. In 2016, I fell in a ditch and broke my ankle. I had drunk a glass of wine earlier in the evening, although just the one, but it in my defence it was pitch black when I set out home and I foolishly didn’t have a torch. Two years later I was flat on my face again resulting in two very bloody knees the week before my son’s wedding. Fortunately, my wedding outfit involved trousers. And it was the dog’s fault that time. Forward another two years and I slipped rather spectacularly on wet rocks in the Lake District... arse over elbow is the phrase that springs to mind. That evening when we ‘ate out to help out’ I remember remarking that my hand was a bit painful.  It was only a week later, on our return home that I discovered I had broken bone in my hand. And before the year was out, over I went again (dog’s fault once more I might add) cracking my head on the road which required a trip in an ambulance and several hours in A & E. Although it didn’t feel lucky at the time, there was no lasting damage just a couple of weeks of concussion and vertigo. So, do I fall over more than most people? I don’t know, but I think I probably walk more than average so possibly not. I don’t know the answer, but it has me pondering on the nature of things changing. Maybe the gradual change as we grow older, barely perceptible until we find ourselves having a fall (I still maintain I fell over… there’s definitely a difference)

But then there are the big changes in life, some not unexpected, but others coming out of the blue. This week on the news we have seen people lose their homes to crumbling cliffsides, or unexpected flooding. Men trapped underground in a collapsed tunnel for more than two weeks and of course, those families utterly devastated by war. Lives completely changed forever in unimaginable ways without warning. Fortunately for most of us we don’t ever have to deal with that sort of dramatic change in our life. But there are the smaller things that impact us too. If you are reading this on Sunday, I am currently on the road on my way north to Scotland, something we hadn’t planned to be doing in early December. It might not have been planned but it was not entirely unexpected either, as sadly we are on our way to my mother in law’s funeral. I guess with the loss of an elderly parent it will always be a case of when rather than if, but when the time does come, we still find ourselves unprepared for the sadness and the changes it brings to our lives. For my husband, he no longer has the daily phone calls, the need to manage affairs from afar and ultimately no longer a reason for regular trips back home to his birthplace. There are changes to routine and our daily lives and I can see at times he seems at a loss as to what to do next. But as with all things, life will find its rhythm again, until the next fall comes, because that is the nature of life.

A lesson for us all to enjoy what we have while we have it. Meanwhile… I should look where I’m going and stop peering into other people’s houses. Although it is so very tempting at this time of year!