Another Deadly Fall

I just received news that my poet friend, Michael Riley, has died. He was 73. 

A mutual friend told me that Mike suffered a bad fall about two weeks before his death: "He had a fall a few weeks ago and then in quick succession suffered a heart attack and a stroke. He has been on life support since, until …"


Here's part of an interview he gave to Lancaster Online:

“It's difficult to make a good poem," he says. "Ninety-six point five percent of the time is revision…. Good poetry is difficult."
To explain what prompted him to write a book of poetry on faith, Riley refers to the late Catholic poet Josephine Jacobsen, an American who died in 2003 at the age 94, who had three mystical experiences as a child.
"She found the urge to write poems came from the same place," Riley says. "You have to do it. If you deal with words, you have to use them."
Riley sometimes envies photographers, painters and musicians, who can skip the words and go straight to the feelings.
"With words, you're navigating through meanings that have accumulated over hundreds and hundreds of years. It's the pull of mystery and awe that you're trying to reach."
Riley refers to John Carey, an American who trained in Celtic studies and wrote about "the full extravagant strangeness of existence" that captures poets.
“They can't get away as well as other people can," Riley explains. "When cooking eggs or walking the dog, it's always there — the strangeness, the awe that faith shares with poetry."
Faith and poetry also share a sense of giftedness, Riley says.
“By this I mean not that you have a gift but it's a gift that is given to you, like faith is a gift. Often writers and artists who are not particularly religious feel swept into art. Often it feels you've only helped to create it. It's a feeling that something has taken hold of you. It's given. You haven't just done it.
"People ask me how I do it. I say, 'I don't know. I just do it.'"


Here is one of his poems from his book  Circling the Stones:

Sacrifice

Great Stone Circle, Lough Gir

I carry my wounded heart from wonder
to wonder. Steer its swollen chanbers
and irregular red waterfall

into one Druid priest's best chance
for eternity. It rises in its wet dance
with the moon, bones of granite circling

his upraised prize. Here in god's ribs
the left chamber that won't dip
water into wine

trips with surrender
midnight's flat pulse, wears
 all flesh from the shriven soul.

 

A bad fall precipited Mike's death.

 

About Falls: I have posted this before. It is an excerpt from an article by Jeremy Faust in Salon from November 2016.  I found it very helpful! 

 

“…  as our population continues to live longer and longer, falls are becoming the great plague of the modern era. They are the leading cause of accidental death in the elderly, and the incidence has increased steadily over the past decade. And, usually, they are not an easy way to go—many cause prolonged discomfort.

 

"Still, we don’t think of falls as being that serious. Consider the following two scenarios. In the first, you learn that your mother has just been diagnosed with cancer. Regardless of its stage, this news is likely to be met with tremendous distress by both patients and their families. People spring into action. Treatment plans are made. Financial houses are put in order. Wills are written. Advanced-care directives are considered. Old grudges are forgiven. In the second scenario, you are told that your mother has been admitted to the hospital after a fall. Obviously, you are worried. But, you may think, at least she’s not dying or anything.

 

"All too often, this is the wrong reaction. The one-year mortality for patients who are admitted to the hospital after a fall is a staggering 33 percent. A fall bad enough to warrant hospital admission can carry as poor a prognosis as some stage IV cancers that have metastasized to the lungs and brain. Of course, the people who are hospitalized after a fall are much more likely to have a higher mortality rate anyway. (They’re going to be older, and have more comorbid medical conditions, but falls still pose a bigger risk than other conditions.) By comparison, the one-year mortality for older patients admitted to the hospital for pneumonia hovers around 21 percent

 

 

"Sure, heart and lung disease and cancer are statistically more likely to kill you. If you live long enough, these most certainly will catch up with you, though often after a long, slow, and steady decline. In fact, by the time we get to be the age at which falls are risky, the other things will likely already have done much of the damage they’re going to do. Most middle-age and older people likely already have heart disease that poses little immediate threat to them. In one study, 73 percent of subjects who died from noncardiac causes (and who had no prior symptoms of cardiac disease) were found to have significant coronary artery disease on autopsy. Their clogged arteries didn’t contribute to their deaths. Most of us effortlessly live with some degree of age-related heart disease and for a great many of us, it poses no unusual risk.

 

 

"But when it comes to ruining a life overnight, there’s nothing like a bad fall. Nothing takes a perfectly healthy functioning older person and renders them immediately, and often irrevocably, miserable and incapacitated like a serious fall. (Well, maybe car accidents—but statistically, more older people are going to suffer from falls than car accidents. In fact, it’s not even close.) Falls not only pose a higher risk of death, they’re also immediately and catastrophically debilitating. If I were 80, I’d pick certain cancers or heart disease over a significant fall in a heartbeat.

 

"Why are falls so dangerous? There are short- and long-term risks. In the short term, falls that involve trauma to the head can cause life-threatening intracranial bleeding. Broken bones have their own risk, including lung embolisms in which tiny fragments of broken bone make their way into our circulation and reach the lung, causing impressive and often life-threatening damage. But falls that cause broken hips and legs can cause death and disability even well after the acute phase. Blood clots to the lung are more likely in the months after surgery or prolonged periods of immobilization. People who become more sedentary are more likely to develop a host of other problems, including heart and lung disease.

 

"A fall bad enough to warrant hospital admission can carry as poor a prognosis as some stage IV cancers. "