Part 1: The first time was my Dad. Now it’s my Mum. And I finally see the whole system for what it is.

In 2024, my dad died alone in a hospital that was meant to keep him safe. Unwitnessed. Unprotected. Lost inside a system so overstretched that compassion had to compete with paperwork.

I’ve written about that before — the disbelief, the shock, the part of me that still can’t reconcile how a human being can simply slip through bureaucracy designed to protect the system, not the people within it.

I thought I understood the depth of what was broken.

But now, watching my mum go through her own ordeal, I see it from a different angle — not as a daughter in grief this time, but as a witness to what happens when the systems meant to protect our ageing parents no longer fit the way people actually live.

When elderly people fall alone.

My mum is 83. Widowed. Organised. Still very independent for her age. She lives alone in a “retirement living” unit — not a nursing home, not assisted living, just a small apartment in a building full of people who are all ageing at the same slow, quiet pace.

And then she fell.

It was about 7:30 p.m. in her bathroom. She felt herself fainting and went down hard. She wasn’t wearing her emergency call necklace — the one that’s meant to “save lives.” At some point she blacked out. We don’t know for how long. When she came to, she was on the floor in excruciating pain. She couldn’t stand. She couldn’t reach a phone. She couldn’t press a button.

No one knew.

She had to roll herself over and commando-crawl across the bathroom floor, dragging her body with bleeding elbows, to make her way to the bed. I don’t know how long that took. Could’ve been minutes. Could’ve been an hour. Could’ve been more. And still — she didn’t call for help.

She waited twelve hours before she called me.

Twelve.

Not because she was fine — but because she didn’t want to make a fuss. Because she didn’t know what would happen if she pressed the button. Because fear, pride, confusion and independence all live in the same part of the brain when you’re old and alone.

When she finally rang me in the morning, I got there in under an hour. She could barely move, but she was upright — perhaps downplaying it — though clearly still in pain. Together we pressed the emergency necklace button to call the ambulance.That’s when I realised the flaw no one talks about.

When you push the button, it sets off a speaker box — in Mum’s case, positioned near her front door. An alert siren goes off and then a voice tries to speak through it. You’re meant to reply from wherever you are.

But if you’ve fallen in a bathroom? Or can’t walk? Or can’t crawl to the box? Then what?

Do they just assume you’re okay if you don’t answer? Do they send help anyway? Mum told me they do.

I had to walk over to it, speak, and give them an update on Mum. Sadly, the Wi-Fi in her unit is terrible — full of black spots, cutting in and out. They asked who I was, and luckily my number was listed as next of kin, so they called my mobile. I had to walk out onto the deck just to keep the call connected. I’m not sure if it’s just her apartment — there’s a lot of concrete and three or four apartments above her — but how many elderly residents are sitting in dead zones with devices that don’t work properly?

I explained she’d fallen and needed an ambulance. They said there were delays — it was busy. She was conscious, so she wasn’t a priority. “They’ll get there when they can.”

Three and a half hours later, they arrived.

In that time she got dizzy again. I gave her food; colour came back to her face. I could see she was in a lot of pain but kept saying she was okay, that there was no rush. There’s something about old people that I now really see: dignity can be dangerous. Pride in appearing “fine” can actually kill you (it's not a criticism – I'll be the same :). And the system is built on the assumption that the loudest person gets the care.

When the ambos arrived she perked up — almost performing. Laughing, answering questions sharply, minimising the pain. Meanwhile, she could barely bend. She was showing off to prove she’s “still got it.” I get it. Again, I’ll probably do the same at 83. But our systems aren’t designed to read between the lines; they take you at face value and tick boxes.

She spent hours in emergency — bloods, scans, questions and waiting. By 7 p.m. that night they finally found her a bed.

The scans showed compressed discs in her back. No wonder she was in agony, but thank goodness – it could have been so much worse.

The next day I spoke to the physio and asked how long she’d be in hospital. She said, “Conservatively two weeks, but it could be up to four.” I was shocked. “Four weeks? For compressed discs?”

Her answer floored me, but it also made everything click.

“It’s not the injury that keeps her here. It’s her living situation. Because she now lives alone and doesn’t have home-based help or a partner, we can’t discharge her until she can fully look after herself. If she had someone at home or lived in aged care, it would be much faster.”

That’s when it hit me.

Hospitals aren’t full because old people are sick. They’re full because old people have nowhere safe to go afterwards. The stats say around 20 % of hospital beds are occupied by people who are well enough to leave but can’t — because their home setup can’t support them.

My mum doesn’t have a cleaner. She cooks her own meals. She still drives. She lives alone.

So she gets a hospital bed — not because she needs acute care, but because there’s no infrastructure to catch her if she’s sent home.

And she’s one of the lucky ones.

So here I am again — seeing the same broken scaffolding from a new angle. First my dad died because no one was there when it mattered. Now my mum survived — but only because she eventually called me, not because the system was ready for her.

Two different outcomes.

One failing framework.

And somewhere in between all of this, I’m the daughter — holding the invisible load, looking at the future through a very real lens.

This isn’t just about ageing.

It’s about design failure.

It’s about assumptions.

It’s about tech that doesn’t work in the places it’s needed most.

It’s about independence without safety nets.

It’s about people too proud or too scared to press the button.

It’s about women crawling across the floor in the dark, bleeding, alone — thinking they’ll just sleep it off, or don’t want to trouble anyone, or are in too much pain to think clearly.

And it’s about me — realising I cannot unsee any of it now.

Because once it happens twice in one lifetime — once in death and once in survival — you understand that the system isn’t broken.

It was never human to begin with.

B x

PART TWO

Just a note: Everything I’ve shared here is based on my personal experience and views. I’m not naming names or pointing fingers — just being honest about what I saw and felt. It’s not about blame. It’s about trying to do better. This is shared in the hope of encouraging conversation, not conflict.