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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: General Interest
- Published: 11/21/2025
The View From 95---September
Born 1929, M, from Roseville/CA, United States
View95Sept
The View From 95---September
There is no question as to what was the most significant event of September. This was the fall I had in the bathroom early in the month. For some reason I was impelled to write a piece about this so rather than write about it all over again here it is:
The Fall
Author’s Note: This account is almost entirely true so I’ve put it in that category.
Let me start by saying I’m 95 years old and since my wife Beverly passed away almost three years ago have been living alone in my house. The day started as usual. I was up about eight. When I stood up to get out of bed my knees both hurt, especially the right one with little or no cartilage. I’d finished my bathroom business and was turning around to go back into the bedroom when it happened. I lost my balance and committed the cardinal sin for an old guy, I fell. So there I was, on the bathroom floor. You can imagine what my first word was. As far as I could tell, I wasn’t injured. I had to somehow get myself back into the bedroom and then I’d hoist myself onto the bed.
I’m not sure how I managed this but it was a long and arduous journey. Finally, sweaty and worn out, I was by the bed. The only catch was that I couldn’t get myself up and onto the bed no matter how hard I tried. The next thing was to get my phone, which was on the bedside table. I tried to lift myself high enough to reach the phone but again I couldn’t. Finally, I knocked the table over. Again, a catch. I didn’t see the phone anywhere. It seemed to have disappeared. What now? I would have to see if I could somehow get to the living room where another phone was. Judging by my trip from bathroom to bedroom this might take the rest of the day. But wait a minute, there, under the chair I was leaning on was the phone. Somehow it had gotten there.
Sometime last year, about ten months ago, I had had a fall. As a result I had a lockbox attached to a post on the porch of the house. The Roseville fire department was supposed to have the key to the lockbox, which held the key to the house. But first I called my neighbor N--- No, he wasn’t there so I left a message. Next I called my son who lived in nearby Rocklin and commuted to work in Stockton but who sometimes worked at home. He too wasn’t there. Okay, I called 911 and told the lady I had a lockbox and the Roseville fire department had the key. A few minutes later she told me help was on the way.
Ten or fifteen minutes later I had voices and help had arrived in the form of four large firemen. The first thing they asked was if I wanted to go to a hospital. I said Absolutely not. Two of them grabbed me and hoisted me up and into the chair I had in the bedroom. They asked me questions like what city we were in and what year it was. When they were satisfied I had all my marbles they had me stand up and walk a few steps with the walker I had in the bedroom. I succeeded in doing this and they concluded I was okay to leave on my own. They told me to call if I needed them. I said I would and thanked them. Maybe they hadn’t saved my life but it was close.
Shortly after my neighbor called. He’d gotten my message. I told him about the fire department rescue and assured him I was okay. However, I was expecting a Safeway delivery that afternoon and asked if he would come over and help me put the stuff away. Still later my son who’d also gotten my message called from Stockton and asked if he wanted me to stop by when he got back. I told him that wasn’t necessary. He said he would come by that weekend.
The day proceeded as usual. I kept the phone in my pocket just in case and I also decided that from then on I’d take the phone with me when I went into the bathroom in the morning. My instructions to the Safeway delivery person were to ring the bell and stay to help me bring in the bags of stuff I’d ordered. Sometimes the delivery person did this but sometimes not. This time he did and it turned out my neighbor N--- had kept watch, saw him and told him what to do. When everything had been put on the kitchen counter my neighbor appeared and kept watch as I put all the items in their proper places. So that was taken care of.
It’s now been a few weeks since the fall and the initial shock has about worn off. Being a very old guy I know my balance is not what it used to be but don’t think it was that which caused the fall. There was a cloth bath mat in front of the shower. I’d gone into the bathroom first thing in the morning hundreds of times, maybe thousands, of times and the mat had never concerned me. However, I believe I that this one time I somehow tripped over it and couldn’t grab on to anything to stop falling. I’ve since rolled up the mat and put it away. I also make it a point to keep my phone in my pocket or otherwise within reach at all times.
The good thing about the fall, if there can be said to be anything good, is that it showed that the lockbox worked as it should and I assume that if I do fall again I can summon help and that the help will arrive quickly. Also, I’m in the process of writing a kind of memoir that I call The View From 95 and what would such a memoir be without recounting a fall.
Yes, falls, as they say, come with the territory, when you’re an oldster and the statistics are pretty bad. One reason is that something happens to the fluid in your ears that affects balance and your balance gets shaky. And you lose muscle mass and so it becomes more difficult to get yourself off the floor if you do fall; in my case at age 95, impossible.
Okay, enough of this for now. The month started off with a little techno problem. My provider for TV, internet and phones originally was Consolidated Communications, Last year CC decided to get out of the TV business, something to do with streaming, so I had to get another provider and settled on Comcast, also known as Xfinity (maybe they thought this sounded jazzier, as the least of many evils. Since then there’d been the problems I’d expected, the latest being that one morning I had no TV at all. A message on the TV screen said there was a local problem and after a while the TV came on except for one thing, I couldn’t get ESPN, which was airing the current tennis tournament and which I’d set to record. I called Xfinity’s so-called customer service and had the usual battle to get past the automated phone system to an actual person. When I finally did and explained the problem I got nowhere and then was disconnected. I thought that was it but, surprisingly, I got a call from Xfinity. It was, as I found out, a lady called Mary, who was from the Phillipines. Mary did something to reset my TV and when this was done, presto, I could get ESPN.
Going back to the fall, it had some repercussions. I was supposed to go with my neighbor N--- for a pedicure that week but feeling a little shaky postponed it to the following week. Our appointment at the nails place was for 2 PM so we went for lunch at the Huckleberry’s that was in the same shopping center. I had a breakfast for lunch---two eggs over easy with hashbrowns and toast, a little change from my usual cold cereal with fruit. The pedicure, we found, had gotten even more expensive, but still felt good. However, this outing proved to be pretty taxing for me. I had a hard time getting out of the car and an even harder time getting up and out from the booth in the restaurant. Beverly’s birthday (October 3rd) was coming up and in previous years my sons and I had gone to Mount Vernon, where her ashes were interred, but now I felt I couldn’t make this, plus my sons weren’t eager to go there either, saying they found it depressing. I called Mount Vernon and they gave me the name and number of a florist that delivered to them. I called this florist and arranged for them to deliver flowers to Beverly’s plaque and they said they’d e-mail me a photo after this was done.
Then another techno situation emerged. I said above that I had to find another TV provider. Now CC decided to get out of provided for the internet and phones and that something called Fidium was taking over. As directed I called Fidium and made an appointment for someone to come and do the installation on the 17th, 3-5 PM. The tech came at 3, gave me a new router and then went out to do something for almost two hours. Nothing had to be done with the phones. He checked and everything seemed to be working. I told him it was my experience that when any techno “improvement” was made something went wrong. I didn’t know how prescient I proved to be but that will wait until the October installment.
I’m not sure how this came about but somewhere I must have read that Philip Roth had written a book about old age called “Everyman” so I splurged and bought it for my Kindle. The protagonist of “Everyman,” who is never named, is dead at its beginning but ends up in a senior community that seems quite nice but gets cut off from his older brother and feels very lonely, something most oldsters can relate to. He’s pretty healthy and active but has a series of heart attacks and procedures and I found out that Roth himself had these so knew all about them. In the end he dies on the operating table during the latest surgery. I then learned Roth had written another book that touched on aging called “Patrimony,” which was a true account of his father’s last years and then passing. The father misses his late wife and I could certainly relate to that. The father has a large tumor in his brain and the question is whether to operate or not at his age, another relatable situation. Roth as always touches on personal events that most writers would consider too private to write about but the book is interesting. In the end the decision is not to operate and the father has mounting problems and finally passes away. Reading these two books passed some time during the month.
The month was also an active one for events in the outside world. On the 10th, a day after my fall, a conservative activist, Charlie Kirk, I’d never heard of until then, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated on the 10th, a day after my fall. This gave me something to take my mind off my own situation as it was the big news story for the next two weeks. It seems that Kirk had started something called Starting Point USA and gone around college campuses, not known for being partial to conservatism, debating students with opposing views. His assassination was at a college campus while doing this. The legacy media made a big deal about the killer not being immediately caught and about the FBI director himself going out to the crime locale, not usually done but a couple of days later despite this the killer was turned in by his family, a young guy who thought Kirk was spreading hatred.
The political and media reaction to Kirk’s killing took up most of the next two weeks news. The legacy media reported that Kirk was really a racist and misogynist and so was asking to be killed. Then they shifted to claiming that improbably the killer was really a Maga guy. One consequence was that Jimmy Kimmel, who said this last was put off the air for a few days but then put back on.
Other big news events were that the Fed finally cut interest rates, by one quarter, and I didn’t see any big things resulting, and that there might be a peace treaty between Israel and Hamas based on a 20-point plan Trump had come up with.
Of more interest to me was that as always around Labor Day the U.S. Open tennis tournament was played in New York and the NFL football season started. This meant recording and watching a lot of sports during the month, something else to take my mind off my fall.
Of more personal interest, the latest issue of Hackwriters, an online magazine I’d been contributing stories to for many years, came out with the announcement that after mm years this would be the last one. So, like myself, things were fading out. One last thing to report---this month set a record for things falling to the floor (besides myself) in accord with the law that the older you got and the harder it was to bend down this would happen. Pills would roll off counters, napkins would float away, pens would be knocked off tables, I would drop something, there was something almost daily. Another inevitable consequence, like falling, of old age.
s.
The View From 95---September
There is no question as to what was the most significant event of September. This was the fall I had in the bathroom early in the month. For some reason I was impelled to write a piece about this so rather than write about it all over again here it is:
The Fall
Author’s Note: This account is almost entirely true so I’ve put it in that category.
Let me start by saying I’m 95 years old and since my wife Beverly passed away almost three years ago have been living alone in my house. The day started as usual. I was up about eight. When I stood up to get out of bed my knees both hurt, especially the right one with little or no cartilage. I’d finished my bathroom business and was turning around to go back into the bedroom when it happened. I lost my balance and committed the cardinal sin for an old guy, I fell. So there I was, on the bathroom floor. You can imagine what my first word was. As far as I could tell, I wasn’t injured. I had to somehow get myself back into the bedroom and then I’d hoist myself onto the bed.
I’m not sure how I managed this but it was a long and arduous journey. Finally, sweaty and worn out, I was by the bed. The only catch was that I couldn’t get myself up and onto the bed no matter how hard I tried. The next thing was to get my phone, which was on the bedside table. I tried to lift myself high enough to reach the phone but again I couldn’t. Finally, I knocked the table over. Again, a catch. I didn’t see the phone anywhere. It seemed to have disappeared. What now? I would have to see if I could somehow get to the living room where another phone was. Judging by my trip from bathroom to bedroom this might take the rest of the day. But wait a minute, there, under the chair I was leaning on was the phone. Somehow it had gotten there.
Sometime last year, about ten months ago, I had had a fall. As a result I had a lockbox attached to a post on the porch of the house. The Roseville fire department was supposed to have the key to the lockbox, which held the key to the house. But first I called my neighbor N--- No, he wasn’t there so I left a message. Next I called my son who lived in nearby Rocklin and commuted to work in Stockton but who sometimes worked at home. He too wasn’t there. Okay, I called 911 and told the lady I had a lockbox and the Roseville fire department had the key. A few minutes later she told me help was on the way.
Ten or fifteen minutes later I had voices and help had arrived in the form of four large firemen. The first thing they asked was if I wanted to go to a hospital. I said Absolutely not. Two of them grabbed me and hoisted me up and into the chair I had in the bedroom. They asked me questions like what city we were in and what year it was. When they were satisfied I had all my marbles they had me stand up and walk a few steps with the walker I had in the bedroom. I succeeded in doing this and they concluded I was okay to leave on my own. They told me to call if I needed them. I said I would and thanked them. Maybe they hadn’t saved my life but it was close.
Shortly after my neighbor called. He’d gotten my message. I told him about the fire department rescue and assured him I was okay. However, I was expecting a Safeway delivery that afternoon and asked if he would come over and help me put the stuff away. Still later my son who’d also gotten my message called from Stockton and asked if he wanted me to stop by when he got back. I told him that wasn’t necessary. He said he would come by that weekend.
The day proceeded as usual. I kept the phone in my pocket just in case and I also decided that from then on I’d take the phone with me when I went into the bathroom in the morning. My instructions to the Safeway delivery person were to ring the bell and stay to help me bring in the bags of stuff I’d ordered. Sometimes the delivery person did this but sometimes not. This time he did and it turned out my neighbor N--- had kept watch, saw him and told him what to do. When everything had been put on the kitchen counter my neighbor appeared and kept watch as I put all the items in their proper places. So that was taken care of.
It’s now been a few weeks since the fall and the initial shock has about worn off. Being a very old guy I know my balance is not what it used to be but don’t think it was that which caused the fall. There was a cloth bath mat in front of the shower. I’d gone into the bathroom first thing in the morning hundreds of times, maybe thousands, of times and the mat had never concerned me. However, I believe I that this one time I somehow tripped over it and couldn’t grab on to anything to stop falling. I’ve since rolled up the mat and put it away. I also make it a point to keep my phone in my pocket or otherwise within reach at all times.
The good thing about the fall, if there can be said to be anything good, is that it showed that the lockbox worked as it should and I assume that if I do fall again I can summon help and that the help will arrive quickly. Also, I’m in the process of writing a kind of memoir that I call The View From 95 and what would such a memoir be without recounting a fall.
Yes, falls, as they say, come with the territory, when you’re an oldster and the statistics are pretty bad. One reason is that something happens to the fluid in your ears that affects balance and your balance gets shaky. And you lose muscle mass and so it becomes more difficult to get yourself off the floor if you do fall; in my case at age 95, impossible.
Okay, enough of this for now. The month started off with a little techno problem. My provider for TV, internet and phones originally was Consolidated Communications, Last year CC decided to get out of the TV business, something to do with streaming, so I had to get another provider and settled on Comcast, also known as Xfinity (maybe they thought this sounded jazzier, as the least of many evils. Since then there’d been the problems I’d expected, the latest being that one morning I had no TV at all. A message on the TV screen said there was a local problem and after a while the TV came on except for one thing, I couldn’t get ESPN, which was airing the current tennis tournament and which I’d set to record. I called Xfinity’s so-called customer service and had the usual battle to get past the automated phone system to an actual person. When I finally did and explained the problem I got nowhere and then was disconnected. I thought that was it but, surprisingly, I got a call from Xfinity. It was, as I found out, a lady called Mary, who was from the Phillipines. Mary did something to reset my TV and when this was done, presto, I could get ESPN.
Going back to the fall, it had some repercussions. I was supposed to go with my neighbor N--- for a pedicure that week but feeling a little shaky postponed it to the following week. Our appointment at the nails place was for 2 PM so we went for lunch at the Huckleberry’s that was in the same shopping center. I had a breakfast for lunch---two eggs over easy with hashbrowns and toast, a little change from my usual cold cereal with fruit. The pedicure, we found, had gotten even more expensive, but still felt good. However, this outing proved to be pretty taxing for me. I had a hard time getting out of the car and an even harder time getting up and out from the booth in the restaurant. Beverly’s birthday (October 3rd) was coming up and in previous years my sons and I had gone to Mount Vernon, where her ashes were interred, but now I felt I couldn’t make this, plus my sons weren’t eager to go there either, saying they found it depressing. I called Mount Vernon and they gave me the name and number of a florist that delivered to them. I called this florist and arranged for them to deliver flowers to Beverly’s plaque and they said they’d e-mail me a photo after this was done.
Then another techno situation emerged. I said above that I had to find another TV provider. Now CC decided to get out of provided for the internet and phones and that something called Fidium was taking over. As directed I called Fidium and made an appointment for someone to come and do the installation on the 17th, 3-5 PM. The tech came at 3, gave me a new router and then went out to do something for almost two hours. Nothing had to be done with the phones. He checked and everything seemed to be working. I told him it was my experience that when any techno “improvement” was made something went wrong. I didn’t know how prescient I proved to be but that will wait until the October installment.
I’m not sure how this came about but somewhere I must have read that Philip Roth had written a book about old age called “Everyman” so I splurged and bought it for my Kindle. The protagonist of “Everyman,” who is never named, is dead at its beginning but ends up in a senior community that seems quite nice but gets cut off from his older brother and feels very lonely, something most oldsters can relate to. He’s pretty healthy and active but has a series of heart attacks and procedures and I found out that Roth himself had these so knew all about them. In the end he dies on the operating table during the latest surgery. I then learned Roth had written another book that touched on aging called “Patrimony,” which was a true account of his father’s last years and then passing. The father misses his late wife and I could certainly relate to that. The father has a large tumor in his brain and the question is whether to operate or not at his age, another relatable situation. Roth as always touches on personal events that most writers would consider too private to write about but the book is interesting. In the end the decision is not to operate and the father has mounting problems and finally passes away. Reading these two books passed some time during the month.
The month was also an active one for events in the outside world. On the 10th, a day after my fall, a conservative activist, Charlie Kirk, I’d never heard of until then, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated on the 10th, a day after my fall. This gave me something to take my mind off my own situation as it was the big news story for the next two weeks. It seems that Kirk had started something called Starting Point USA and gone around college campuses, not known for being partial to conservatism, debating students with opposing views. His assassination was at a college campus while doing this. The legacy media made a big deal about the killer not being immediately caught and about the FBI director himself going out to the crime locale, not usually done but a couple of days later despite this the killer was turned in by his family, a young guy who thought Kirk was spreading hatred.
The political and media reaction to Kirk’s killing took up most of the next two weeks news. The legacy media reported that Kirk was really a racist and misogynist and so was asking to be killed. Then they shifted to claiming that improbably the killer was really a Maga guy. One consequence was that Jimmy Kimmel, who said this last was put off the air for a few days but then put back on.
Other big news events were that the Fed finally cut interest rates, by one quarter, and I didn’t see any big things resulting, and that there might be a peace treaty between Israel and Hamas based on a 20-point plan Trump had come up with.
Of more interest to me was that as always around Labor Day the U.S. Open tennis tournament was played in New York and the NFL football season started. This meant recording and watching a lot of sports during the month, something else to take my mind off my fall.
Of more personal interest, the latest issue of Hackwriters, an online magazine I’d been contributing stories to for many years, came out with the announcement that after mm years this would be the last one. So, like myself, things were fading out. One last thing to report---this month set a record for things falling to the floor (besides myself) in accord with the law that the older you got and the harder it was to bend down this would happen. Pills would roll off counters, napkins would float away, pens would be knocked off tables, I would drop something, there was something almost daily. Another inevitable consequence, like falling, of old age.
s.
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