Napa
CA
We went to an annual San Francisco “Dickens Fair”
yesterday. It was the Cow Palace, a huge
place just packed with various stalls, stages, actors running around playing
period characters, and food, all in a Victorian theme. There was an astonishing number of fair-goers
in full costumes with all the accouterments, eg several men with chimney-sweep
equipment. So it was pretty neat. Although the birds-eye map of the floor was
pretty straightforward, it was confusing for me to wander around by myself. And when I did spot something and wanted to
show it to the family, I had trouble remembering where I had seen them. That’s a significant increase in impairment
of spatial memory.
During this Christmas vacation, I’ve thought
intermittently about how long it will be until I see the family again. I’ve decided to come much more frequently to
see Laurel and her family so it will be only March. But Karin and Gabriel will be in India for as
long as a year and a half as he does his PhD dissertation. They will be back in August but then not
until mid-2014. The changes in cognitive
ability don’t seem to be happening very quickly, but they are certainly
happening. I don’t know who I’ll be when
I see them again. In some important way
this and other times are opportunities for saying good-bye, for recognizing
that things will be significantly different when we are together again. Perhaps that’s too dramatic! Perhaps it will be so gradual that we don’t
ever really say goodbye but the relationships just fade away. If so, when is the time for mourning? Probably I just have to accept the fact that
each saying goodbye will have more significance than it has before this disease. Maybe that’s enough.
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