Please stay active–the alternative is grim
It’s been two weeks and two days since my mom died suddenly–two weeks and two days since I posted.
As you might expect, life has not been normal. I took a week off from work and spent most of it sleeping. Just one of many ways to deal with grief and shock.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my mom. She was 78 years old when she died, and for most of her life she was a vibrant, curious, creative, active person. When my dad died four years ago, she had already started physically to go downhill. She’d had spinal stenosis for years but was afraid to have surgery. The result was numbness and tingling in her hands and feet that made it difficult to do the cooking, needlecrafts, long walks, and stationary biking she had formerly enjoyed.
She had a knee replaced a year after my dad died, and although the surgery was necessary because the joint was causing extreme pain, she didn’t respond especially well. Once the officially prescribed regimen of physical therapy had ended, she just stopped moving. When we went out to restaurants, she insisted on using her wheelchair rather than her walker. She spent each day in her room, reading, not even coming down the hall to the kitchen for a cup of coffee.
I’ve read enough about inactivity to know what bed rest does to muscles and bones. It isn’t pretty. The less you move, the more you lose, and the sad result is that even standing up and walking across the room become difficult. The falls that plague seniors are one obvious consequence of the loss of muscular strength and sense of balance.
I don’t write this to dis my mom, whom I loved and still love. I suppose I am trying to galvanize myself to make sure I don’t let this happen to myself, my husband, and others I love.
Yesterday I visited the Apple store in a local mall and on the way saw an elderly man obviously walking for exercise. His pace was somewhat slow, and his posture was bent. But he was out there, doing the necessary. Sir, whoever you are, please keep on walking.
