I Stayed in the Car

I still wish I had walked beside her.

As my mother got older, her post-polio syndrome worsened. The falls increased—not that they had ever completely gone away.

One particular day still lives with me.

I was out with my mother, and she wanted to stop at Shopko to pick something up. I wasn’t feeling well. I had MRSA in my finger and was receiving IV antibiotics. The antibiotics caused C. diff. I didn’t have the energy to go into the store with her.

I dropped her off at the front door.

I parked in a handicapped space across from the entrance, leaned my seat back, and fell asleep.

I don’t know how long it was before I heard car horns.

I woke up, sat upright, and looked toward the store.

My mother was lying on the ground in front of the sliding doors.

She had been leaving the store with her cart when the doors closed. She didn’t clear them in time. She fell forward and was unconscious on the concrete.

I ran to her and sat on the ground next to her.

A sprinkler near the entrance was running. When she fell, the water sprayed directly onto her. I positioned myself between her body and the spray, so it hit me instead of her face.

Employees from Shopko began coming outside. Someone called 911.

I yelled to one of the employees to get towels so she could stay dry.

He came back with paper towels.

I lost it.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked.

He looked startled. “That’s all we have.”

“It’s Shopko. Go get a beach towel.”

“I can’t do that,” he said.

I was scared. Angry. And, like my mother, I am helpless.

By the time she regained consciousness, a bystander had gotten an umbrella from his car and was shielding her from the sprinkler.

The ambulance came. She was transported to the hospital.

She had a severe concussion. She suffered vertigo for a year afterward.

But what has stayed with me is the guilt.

I have never gotten over the feeling that I shouldn’t have let her go in alone. That I should have been there. Maybe I could have prevented the fall if I had just walked beside her.

Polio took many things from my mother over her lifetime.

And it left me with a lifetime of guilt.