That Which Has Passed Behind -Tuesday, February 03, 2004 -3:24 am-
Tonight's The West Wing scared me quite a bit. The major premise of the episode is that C.J. Cregg return home for her highschool reunion to find out that her father is afflicted with Alzheimer's. Watching the people on screen made me think a lot about myself. I don't know how much about my memory most of you actually know, it's mostly a joke now, but really, it's a fairly big problem. I don't think any of you were around when it first started happening. I think it must have been Sophomore or the beginning of Junior year that I noticed things becoming different. I was missing meals and not knowing why I was hungry. I was going to classes that had been canceled or moved and wondering where everyone was. I would do things and not remember with whom I had done them. Two years later, I'm not sure where I am compared to that. That bothers me a great deal. I sometimes thing maybe I'm doing better, but that just makes me wonder if I can no longer remember what it's like not to forget. I know I cover better now. I build little pauses into my life to give me time to try to guess at the parts I'm missing. I phrase retellings and remembrances to avoid being specific about when, or where, or whom. More and more, I is start something, or come into a room, only to find out that I have no idea why I'm there, or what I had wanted to do. I rarely know when it is anymore, and can only decide how long ago something was by literally figuring out when it is now and calculating backwards to find out how much time has actually passed. I'm always unnerved to find that what I thought was a matter of day has in fact been many months.
Over the Christmas break, I went with my parents to see my paternal grandparents. My grandfather has had a series of strokes over the last few years. Watching him, I was... I don't know what the word for being bitter and resigned and depressed and scared all at the same time... to see him making the same little breaks I do to try and make the time he needed so that other people wouldn't know that he couldn't remember. I see that, and I see the tv, and I wonder if that's my future. Am I going to forget all of my life, slowly, and wondering all the while if anything is actually changing? Right now, I'm getting along ok, I think. But how long is it until I begin to forget names, or switch them? I look at my future and wonder if I'm going to be there for it, if I'm going to want Mich to be there for it?