New Zealand Police

I ring my mother every Sunday evening at 5pm Melbourne time. I get home to do this even in the summer when the days are long and 5pm is like the middle of the day. This Sunday I was in the studio of my artist friend J. We were talking about painting in the style of Henryk Szydowski or HS as he has become to us (see my blog of May 27th) J has bought a book of his work and we poured over this choosing symbols and colours and making a list of the ones we liked. We were engrossed and time took off. I rushed to the Acland Street Safeway to get S's ‘heart-smart mince’. This is what she eats at the moment. I grabbed that and a couple of other things and raced for home.

At five I had dumped the groceries put some mince on a plate for S, poured a glass of red and was dialing my mother. I got her voice mail. I tried again. I still got the voice mail. I waited a few minutes and dialed again. Still voice mail. I tried to check the line for faults with Telecom in NZ. It’s impossible to do this from Australia.

My mother is housebound and my hour-long phone call on Sunday is part of her weekly programme. She has the phone in her hand waiting. What to do? I walked around the house, stared at the phone then called the local NZ Police.

They were fabulous, wonderful - courteous, helpful and understanding. Have I gone over board here? I couldn’t. There was nothing I could fault and a weight rolled off me.

Two cops headed for her place and found her on the floor. She sits on a cushion at the table and the cushion had slipped off the chair and onto the floor and she had gone with it. The cops who rang me here, in Melbourne, explained all this and told me how she was and that they were sending her to hospital.

Such a silly little accident but she was on the floor struggling to get up for about 3 hours. She listened to the phone ringing but she couldn’t get to it. Tonight she is in hospital. The X-rays say nothing has broken but her right leg is too sore to put weight on.

My mother lives in a house with the entrance on the ground floor and the living on the first floor. Over the years various people have suggested she move and live on one level. She has resisted and continued to slowly make her way up and down the stairs with one hand on the banisters and the other using a crutch. Living on the first floor gives light and views and sun and with these things comes a boost to the spirit.

What next? She sounded defeated. She told me she couldn’t move about even with a walker. I told her that strained muscles usually take a while to heal.