A Fall in The Night

Jonathan Silin wrote My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents to chronicle his experiences learning to care for his elderly parents when their independence began to slip away. Although his years of intimate daily contact with his parents ended with their deaths, his relationship with and understanding of them continues to grow and change.

by Jonathan Silin

I fell this summer. Not a public spill, like the one an old friend took when the heel of her shoe broke off as she stepped up to the podium to say a few heartfelt words at my partner’s memorial service. No, this was more like the fall, instantaneous and without warning, that my 89 year-old father experienced while standing at the sink and brushing his teeth, and which was either the cause of the broken hip diagnosed the following day or the result of an already existing fracture.