Walking out of the grocery with my children today we passed an elderly couple. She was helping him up. Something about them stopped me. He was much bigger than her and he couldn't move well without her. She had his arm and her bags. I asked if we could help, gave her bags to my son, and left my daughter to wheel our cart while I grabbed his other hand.
He was amazingly strong, upright, and able to grip. He held my hand hard. His posture was perfect, better than mine, and his mind was sharp as a tack. We joked together, laughed, as we shuffled. She was short round and in a hurry, pulling him as hard as any terrier pulls a leash. First I asked her if we were supposed to be pulling him. I was unsure if it was okay to ask him, if perhaps his disability had to do with senility. She told me yes, pull, it helps.
I pulled and chatted as his feet twisted and shuffled out of rhythm with the rest of us. Three times he asked us to please slow down. I realized he was intensely lucid and reasonable. "Please slow it down, could ya?" Each time I responded that I was in no hurry. Each time his wife ignored his request.
When we got to the car he asked to get in the back seat. Three or four times he asked. I was at their mercy, clueless which way to direct his arm without an answer. His wife inexplicably unlocked the front door. But she was as charming as him. They were both quite likable.
I walked away holding back tears. I can't figure out what his diagnoses might have been. His body was so strong, his mind was fine, his feet didn't work. Maybe a stroke? A bumper indicated US Air Force. Perhaps an old war wound. The idea that my husband could one day be made so frail was kind of staggering. Life is weird. Weirdly beautiful though. Mostly, they were charming and it was fun to get to help them out.
It might be Parkinson's. If they don't keep moving, they can kind of freeze where they are. There's a trick to finding the rhythm and pace, and once stuck, hard to get unstuck.
ReplyDeleteIt could be that, if she believes pulling helps, urging him to keep moving.
Something else I've noticed about people with Parkinson's is that without exception: very bright,interesting, verbal, articulate--journalists, professors.
Getting old is frightening. Who knows what we're in for--the next big mystery. love, Val
It could be the woman with the disability. My husband and I have noticed this strange sense of purpose that the little old ladies in our lives have developed. They go everywhere fast, panicky almost. They pace if something or someone isn't where it is supposed to be, early. Not on time. Early. Driving, walking, eating, whatever. It is fast, fast, fast. Head down, walking a straight line, even if a straight line isn't the best way to go, leaving the tv on, leaving the front door wide open in their haste, walking over (or tripping over) obstacles, instead of waiting five minutes for them to be removed. They go, go, go. Unable to slow. Unable to stop. Unable to say why the haste. It is a change that seems to escalate as the years go on. I've seen it in relatives and strangers. I see it more in women than men. Perhaps the old man could understand that his body needed more time than he was given, but his wife just could not. She had to go. He had to hurry, hurry, hurry. Pulling helps because it gets him there faster. Because she had to go.
ReplyDeleteIn some mentally ill people they have to walk. That is one of the reasons that some people are homeless. It isn't always for the lack of resources, sometimes they even have homes, they just are driven to walk, walk, endlessly walk. I know of three of such people right in my town. There just isn't a lot to do for them. I think that age could possibly break down whatever area of the brain that plays with that urgency, that area that causes this kind of mental illness in a few people. And what I am describing in the old women in my life, them on the fringes of that kind of mental illness. For sure not a full blown case. But that hurry, hurry, hurry. We HAVE to hurry. With no reason. Just because they HAVE to. Pull him. It helps.
I could be totally off, obviously. ;)