The View From 95---October

View95Oct
The View From 95---October
I wrote that there was no question about what was the most significant event of September for me---the fall I had sometime in the middle of the month. I regret to say that about a month later, in mid- October, I had another fall. This was undoubtedly a significant event but somehow not as much as that previous fall. Maybe it was because it happened first thing in the morning as I was getting out of bed, was turning to retrieve my phone, which was on the bed, lost my balance in turning, and was again on the floor but this time had the phone within reach and what happened after was a repeat of that first fall. I called 911, told the lady who answered the Roseville Fire Department had the key to my lockbox, which had my house key, and once again four large firemen came about fifteen minutes later. There was one significant difference. One of the firemen moved the bedroom chair so that I could get my walker next to the bed and could grasp it as soon as I got up. This meant I was in no danger of falling and I wondered why I hadn’t thought of doing this myself.
Another reason for this second fall maybe not seeming as significant was that the problem I’d foreseen with Fidium occurred---my phones, landline ones, stopped working. When I tried to make a call instead of getting a dial tone I got a busy signal. I made this discovery on a Wednesday and I’m pretty sure the phones had been out since Monday as I had been thinking how nice it was not to have gotten a robocall the past two days. This left me with no choice but to call Fidium’s customer service. Luckily, I still had my cell phone, called a Jitterbug, and that was working. I made my call and discovered that, like Xfinity’s, Fidium’s customer service was located in the Philippines and its automated phone system was just as difficult to get through. When I finally did I got a lady I could barely understand and after going back and forth a while thought she said someone would call me.
By late afternoon nobody had called and I thought I might have heard her wrong as with the Jitterbug her voice had been so faint. I called my next door neighbor Randy, who came over with his iPhone, called, got through to someone even I could hear, told him I was 95 years old and needed my phones right away. I think Randy must have been an executive because he then asked to speak to a supervisor and read him the riot act. However, in the end he got no further than being told somebody would call. We then discussed my situation and Randy convinced me that I should get an iPhone like his. We were to go to the Galleria shopping mall on Monday where there was an iPhone store.
Early next morning, while I was still in bed my phone rang. To my amazement it was somebody from Fidium, who told me my problem was at their end and that he thought it was fixed. The fact that he was able to call me, he said, was encouraging. He gave me his phone number and I hung up and made a couple of test calls. Yes, the phone appeared to be working again. I called back and the tech told me that Fidium’s customer service had layers. First was the customer service I’d gotten, which could do nothing, and then the complaint filtered down to the tech department. So that was the end of that. No, I should have known better. About three weeks later my phones had the same problem again; getting a busy signal instead of a dial tone. So again I called customer service and this time they would send a technician that afternoon. Eric duly arrived and eventually told me the tech had installed Fidium had put in the wrong battery and now he’d put in the right one. So my phones were again working. So this was the end. No, no chance of that but the next time they went out again was in November so I’ll wait until next month to report on that.
Meanwhile, what about my getting an iPhone. I talked to my son M--- and he said he could order one sent to me so I didn’t have to go to the Galleria with R---. He’d also select a plan from Verizon and arrange for payment on my credit card. The iPhone came later in the week but without the cord needed to charge it. Again, R--- came to the rescue; he brought over a spare cord that plugged into a wall socket and when M--- came over that weekend the iPhone was charged. M--- then transferred the apps, most of them, from my iPad to the phone and showed me how to make calls. Later that day I called my sister to test it out and she called me back and it worked both ways. Then that evening my sister’s son called from his iPhone and we were able to have face time so that I saw how my sister looked for the first time in years. For a 90-year old I thought she looked pretty good. I can’t imagine how bad at 95 I looked to her.
So that’s the October phone saga until that point. Of more importance, October 3d was Beverly’s birthday. She would have been 90 years old. The last two years my sons and I had gone to Mount Vernon, where her ashes were interred and put fresh flowers on her plaque. This year I didn’t feel up to doing this as you had to climb up a dirt path to get there, When, many years ago, we’d selected this spot we’d been much younger and hadn’t considered this. Also, my sons were not eager to go there; they found it depressing. I called Mount Vernon and got the name of a florist who delivered flowers to them, called the florist and arranged for this to be done, artificial flowers as these would last longer. The florist e-mailed me a picture of the new flowers on the plaque and I e-mailed this to my son in Ireland, who got it on our family site, Telegram.
Otherwise, I found pictures of Beverly’s life on Telegram, starting with a photo of the two of us taken on our wedding day. We looked young and happy. I had the usual bridegroom’s sappy smile and Beverly alo had a wide smile. It had been a small wedding, in the Unitarian church on Geary Street in San Francisco. Beverly’s brother and his wife, who were in California at the time, and my friend and Beverly’s roommate, who were a couple at the time, were the only ones there. After, we went to dinner and then Beverly and I went back to the apartment we’d found in Oakland. That fall we went back East, to the Bronx, where my family had a big get-together, and everyone loved Beverly. Then is was on to Florida, where Beverly’s parents were living, and Atlanta, where she’d grown up. I wasn’t sure how all these Southerners felt about me, a Yank in Dixieland. These were pleasant memories; still, as always when thought of Beverly, I ended up crying a lot.
At the start of the month Beverly’s brother T--- got good news. The treatment he’d gotten for bladder cancer was successful; he was now cancer-free. Still close to the beginning of October, my grandson M--- came over. He had started junior college and had a class assignment to interview an old person about that person’s early life experiences. I was that older person. I told him about a hitch-hiking experience I’d had when going back from Idaho, where I’d worked for the forestry service during the summer. I’d hitch-hiked out there, ; the first time I’d done anything like that and another story. The experience I’d had was that I got a ride in a pick-up truck in the mountains of Montana, got in the back of the truck, sat down on one of the boxes in the back, and saw that xxx’s for dynamite was written on the boxes and what transpired from there. There was a sequel to this. After I’d retired and started writing for the Suttertown News, as an unpaid volunteer, Beverly called my attention to a feature our local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, had, called My Story. You wrote about some incident in your life and if it was printed got a princely $25. Being a writer already I wrote up my hitch-hiking story and shortly after got a call from the Bee. They’d print my story and needed some information, such as my social security number. I asked if the Bee accepted freelance articles and was told No but maybe their Neighbors section did. He gave me the name and number of their assignments editor, I called her, she told me to submit a couple of articles, she evidently liked them and this was the start of a fifteen year relationship with Neighbors and they paid $50 per article. So it was really the start of being a paid free-lance writer. My grandson got a 100 for his interview with me.
Sometime later in the month my son M--- drove us to the Kaiser facility in Lincoln, where we got our covid and flu shots. My doctor had recommended that I get these. I also went to the lab there and had blood drawn for the annual tests. Sometime later I had a message from someone, from my doctor’s office that the tests showed I was pre-diabetic. At my age I wasn’t going to make any drastic change in my diet but I messaged my doctor asking if we should have a video session and if I should give up the dark chocolate I’d been eating. He messaged back that no, I wasn’t prediabetic and I should continue to enjoy my chocolate.
A couple of other things to note for October. My oldest son D--- decided he was going to retire in January instead of in June of next year. He was about to start on his most strenuous working period when he’d b working or on all call every weekend and I suppose he thought that after that stretch he’d be ready. My middle son M--- meanwhile had a torn ACL years back and had a bothersome knee ever since. Toward the end of the month the pain got so bad he saw his doctor, who told him not only his knee but his hip looked bad. I’d given Michael the name of the surgeon who’d done my hip replacement, which was ten years ago, and Beverly’s knee replacement and Michael was referred to him with the result that he was now on the waiting list for hip replacement surgery. One son retiring and another having hip replacement surgery. I guess they were getting older, too.
In the outer world some notable events had occurred during the month. For one thing, the government had shut down, a closure that would go on to be the longest in history. You might say this was the expected outcome of our deeply divided country and of our two political parties being at such odds with each other that no compromise was possible. A much happier event was that the twenty living hostages held by Hamas were finally released. This was supposed to be the first step in what was Trump’s twenty point peace plan, a peace that was alreadt beung referred to as fragile. Seeing that one party to the plan was a terrorist organization everyone knew couldn’t be trusted this was not unexpected. A key point was that Hamas would disarm and if they’d do so remained to be seen. Another possibly notable event was that the Fed finally cut interest rates, by one-quarter. I’m not sure if this affected anything. In any event, Trump kept trumpeting how great he’d made the economy and the Dems kept saying the economy was terrible and that Trump was a threat to democracy. And “affordability” had become a buzzword.
As perhaps I’ve written before, the world of sports was of more interest to me as watching sports on tv was a main activity in my housebound and restricted life. October used to mean the World Series; now it meant the playoffs and then the Series. I watched some of the Yankees games, rooting for them from force of habit and was glad they beat the hated Red Sox but then they were ousted by Toronto. The upstart Blue Jays then went on to defeat the Dodgers in what was called a classic World Series. In any event it went down to an exciting seventh game, the last few innings of which I did watch.
Most of my sports tv watching in October was of San Francisco 49er games. Unfortunately, the 49ers had so many injuries it was impossible to know from game to game how they’d do. The one notable game was early in the month when they defeated the rival Los Angeles Rams in overtime after the Rams had fumbled going in for a touchdown in regular time and then failed to make it on a fourth and one when it seemed surely they’d score in overtime. At the end of the month the 49ers were still in the playoff hunt, but barely.
In late October the NBA season started so this meant watching my other team, the Sacramento Kings. The Kings, after sixteen long years, had finally made it to the playoffs two seasons ago but retrogressed last season and had made a disastrous deal losing the heart of their team, D’aaron Fox . They got off to a so-so start this season and I wondered if they’d improve or further regress.
So it was on to November and the next installment of my Fidium phones saga and possibly other misfortunes and November 6 would mark the third year of Beverly’s passing and another rough day.