My Real Life

The movie, Still Alice chronicles a relatively young woman and her descent into Alzheimer’s disease.

I haven’t seen it, as watching my Grandfather battle the disease was hard enough.

I don’t want to watch someone else go through it.

So, I title this post, with a bit of tongue in cheek, a bit of humor, but a bit of real fear, as well.

I know my father worries that he will develop the disease, as his father did.

But, I worry, too.

And not just because I seem to have inherited every health issue trait that my parents had to share with me (diabetes, asthma, migraines, legal blindness in one eye) but because I’m forgetful.

I don’t mean, like, run-of-the-mill, “Oh, I lost my keys” forgetful, although I do lose mine at least once a day.

I mean, like, I used to be the collective memory of Kim, Erin, Michaela, and I, able to recall things that had long ago fallen out of their brains, and now I find myself struggling to find words and saying things like “You know…the thing you use to roll around on the carpet to pick up crap,” when I can’t remember the word “vacuum.”

I thought about writing this blog post about four months ago.

I never got around to it.

Wanna guess why?

I forgot.

I actually started a little notebook where I was writing down the things I forgot.

Here’s how far I got:

Day One:

• thought I forgot my keys in Kim’s apartment in the city…checked my bag three times, because I kept forgetting that I had already checked.
• left my portable charger plugged into the wall at Kim’s apartment, despite saying aloud “Don’t forget the portable charger” four times.
• why I walked into the family room at home (this one happens multiple times a day)
• my credit card number, which I have had memorized for twelve years…I went to type it into a website for payment and drew a complete blank

Day Two:

• why I had opened up a blank email screen – couldn’t remember who I was going to email or why
• to change the laundry from the washer to the dryer, despite the fact that if I didn’t dry those clothes, I’d have nothing to wear
• to close the garage door
• that I had already eaten dinner

Day Three:

• how to get home from our doctor’s office…the office she has had for the past ten years
• to buy sunblock, despite that fact that is the reason I went to the store

On the list, each of those days, I could have written “To write what I’ve forgotten in this notebook” because I had many more things that I forgot to write down.

And then, I eventually just forgot the notebook.

And this post.

People tell me it’s just a normal side-effect of aging.

That it’s because I’ve got so much freaking nonsense in my brain at any given time, it takes the neurons a little longer to fire and get to where they need to be to retrieve the info I need at that exact moment.

That it’s “Mom-Brain.”

And maybe they are right.

But when Monkey Boy runs in the house and says “I found it!” with my Dad’s cell phone in hand, for which we have been searching for over an hour, with me actually calling three different stores to see if anyone found it,  because I completely forgot that I had tucked it into the back pocket of the passenger car seat so we didn’t have to take it into the store with us, it feels a little scary.