The untold lives of seniors

Rebecca Hoch lay on the floor of her apartment, her left leg twisted beneath her and her right leg broken. She knew it was broken because she could see shards of her femur piercing the skin above her right knee.

“Keep still,” she told herself. “You'll make it worse by moving.”

She was 94 years old, and she had been sitting in her apartment at the Terraces of Baycrest, a Toronto retirement home. When she stood up to go to her afternoon poetry class, her leg gave out. The Terraces gives all residents a “lifeline” alert button to wear in case of such an emergency, but Mrs. Hoch had taken hers off – she didn't like the way it felt around her neck.

She yelled for help until she was hoarse, but no one heard her through the heavy fire door. Finally, two hours later, a neighbour heard her cries.

Now 96 and in a wheelchair, Mrs. Hoch winces when she remembers the fall – not because of the pain, which she says was not too bad, but because the paramedics cut off one of her favourite outfits, a navy skirt with six buttons and a beige blouse with a blue floral pattern that her daughter-in-law bought for her in Israel.

“I loved that blouse,” she sighs.

The fact that Mrs. Hoch is alive to mourn her lost clothing is remarkable. Not many 94-year-olds could survive such a brutal fall. Even fewer would battle through rehab to get out of hospital, then through a nursing home and return to independent living at the Terraces. But Mrs. Hoch has done it, with help from a home health aide and by the grace of her own determination.

What drives some people to fight back against illness and recover from loss, while others simply fade away? Where does someone like Mrs. Hoch, who looks so frail in her wheelchair, find the strength and the resilience to keep going?

“I'll never give up,” she declares in her native Scottish burr. “Hope springs eternal – even if it's just for another hour, you hope to live. It's within you.”