ok, i know this may strike some people as insensitive and lacking in compassion, but here are a few of the issues my mother and i have encountered -- and some of the things we've laughed about recently.
if you cannot remember whether your husband says he works 7-7 or 9-9 today, you’re probably normal. if you cannot remember whether he said he went hunting with steve or fishing with joe, you’re ok. you should perhaps pay more attention, but you’re ok. if you’re sitting in the dark waiting for him to come home, and mad enough to spit nails because he hasn’t called to say he’d be late -- and your daughter insists he died over a year ago -- you might have a problem.
if you can’t remember where you stashed the spare key, you’re probably normal. after all, dh puts it under the rock in the back yard about half the time when he uses it, and the other half of the time he hides it under the garbage can. you never need to use it because you never forget your keys. if you’ve forgotten that you have a spare key, a lock or even a front door, you’ve probably got a problem.
if you’ve gotten so engrossed in your book or your knitting or your argument with your husband about whether he said he went hunting with steve or fishing with joe that you’ve forgotten to make lunch and it’s now 5:30, you’re probably ok. enviable -- i never seem to forget lunch -- but essentially normal. if you’ve forgotten that you need to eat at least a couple of times a day, cannot remember how to make a sandwich and don’t know what to do with the one your daughter placed in front of you until she sits down and begins to eat hers, chances are you’re not normal. time to see the memory specialist.
if you can’t remember where you parked your car when you exit the walmart in a strange town, well, we’ve all done that. (haven’t we?) and if you’re looking for a tan chevy when the rental car you were driving was a brown nissan, well you’ve just got a lot on your mind. (your mother's alzheimer's for example.) if you cannot remember whether you were driving the red buick you got in 1975 (and junked in 1988) or the green pick-up truck (the one dad burned up while your daughter was still in college) you’ve got issues. and if you walk right by your car several times because you’re looking for one of the above, you’ve got a real issues. happily, you won't find the red buick or the green pick-up because you ought not to be driving anyway.
if you cannot remember what town the above walmart is located in or how you got there, you ought not to be living on your own. stop fighting the idea of assisted living.
if you leave church after the service and start walking home because it’s nice out, you enjoy walking and you live less than three miles away you’re probably ok, especially if you’ve already arranged with dh that he brings the car home when he’s finished socializing with his friends at church. if you leave church after the service and start walking home to the farm where you’ve lived the past 40 years, and it’s 30 below zero and the farm is ten miles away, this could be signs of a real problem. if you’ve started walking home and the ladies who picked you up and brought you to church are now getting upset because they can’t find you to take you home, that’s a real problem. they might night find you until you've frozen solid.
anyone can get lost looking for the mailbox when they’ve just moved into a new building and everything looks alike. but if you’ve lived in the same house for 40 years, the mailbox is within sight of your front door and you still can’t find it, you might want to consider assisted living. (of course if the problem is that the local teenagers have run over it with their pick-ups again and left it lying flat in the tall grass, that’s another issue entirely.)
if you can't find the cat because he has a habit of crawling into open cupboards and your husband forgot to close the cupboard again and then you closed it so the cat wouldn't crawl in when you went into the kitchen and found it open, you're normal. your cat may have issues, though. if you can't find the cat because you've forgotten that he ran away six months ago, you may have issues. if you've found the cat and he's sick because you've forgotten to feed him, de-worm him or whatever, that's a problem, too.
if you laugh at these situations because you're a sick person who absolutely lacks compassion for the elderly and confused, you have a problem. if you laugh because they've happened to you or your parent and it really is kind of funny and if you don't laugh you'll cry and you've cried enough about the situation for this week, you're ok. you've got real problems, of course, but you're dealing with them as best you can.
