Impossible, Part 2: I fell down the stairs, again.

Hold on to that handrail! According to the National Safety Council, more than 7.9 million people are injured in falls each year. At least five times during my years, I have been part of that statistic by falling down an entire flight of stairs. 

The first fall was just before my fifth birthday. I fell down the stairs to the basement.  My very pregnant mother ran down the stairs after me; that’s when labor started.  I’m not sure what was more traumatic at that point in my life, the fall and resulting wrist injury or the arrival of my little sister.  With maturity and perspective, I can say with certainty that my sister is a blessing and only the fall was traumatic.

The most recent fall, and by far the worst of all, was February 15.  The fall happened around 7:00 in the evening but I have no memory from lunchtime that day through waking up the next morning in a hospital room.  I told my husband that I twisted my ankle at the top of the stairs but I don’t remember that conversation.  He heard the thud, thud, thud of the fall and found me unconscious in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, blocking the front door.  My head had hit the metal front door with enough force to leave a sizable dent in the door and crack the wood molding.  If my life was a cartoon, I would have had little birdies circling my head.

The most important thing that happened during that fall was that I had some sense knocked into my head and learned some important lessons.

1.  My husband is great at handling a crisis.  He called an ambulance and made sure that I got appropriate medical attention.  He was my advocate when I couldn’t advocate for myself. (Isn’t that funny…advocate and advocate are spelled the same. Gotta love English!)

2. Old habits really do die hard.  This conversation I had with my husband in the emergency room during my missing memory period is evidence of that fact:  Me: “Where are my glasses? Why can I see?” Mike: “You had LASIK almost a year ago.” Me: “Oh, that doesn’t sound like me.”  I haven’t worn glasses for almost a year and yet one of my first thoughts on waking up with a concussion is to reach for glasses.  Maybe some habits never die.

3. Missing memories can result in feelings of helplessness and inadequacy.  I doubt that I will ever get back that missing 20 or so hours of memory and I’m not sure that I want to remember the fall.  However, I still struggle with that black hole in my memory bank. This gives me a new level of appreciation and love for my Grandma and Mike’s Grammy who both struggled with memory issues in their last days on Earth.  I pray that I was able to give them the gift of dignity in the moment and not orbit them around the black hole of memory loss.

Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”  It seems impossible that God could use something like falling down the stairs to teach me important lessons about life and the ones I love.  And yet, He did just that.