Memory

Washington DC

I spent an evening at Joseph’s House last evening.  I occasionally visit for the Friday evening meal, which is open to guests.  Last night as we ate, I was seated close to two Ethiopian refugees who’d come to the house in the past few months.  One I had talked to several times in the past months, but I could remember almost nothing of our conversations, even his name.  As he described a talk we'd had a year or two ago about the possibility of living with us, I could only vaguely remember it.   Clearly I’d been a somewhat important person to him … and I could remember  little of it. 

It’s really embarrassing.  These several times we’d met, I’d been surprised by his instant welcome and warmth toward me.  After the first time or two, I knew each time that I had met him but not the contexts.  It wasn’t appropriate in that situation to tell him about my Alzheimer’s, but I worried that he’d felt slighted when I didn’t recognize him for the fourth or fifth time.

The same thing happened with the other Ethiopian, a women that I can now vaguely remember meeting and talking with at our church’s Thanksgiving dinner.  She too was friendlier than a stranger would be, and as we shook hands, she recognized that I didn’t remember her and mentioned it.  I apologized, but again I felt really embarrassed. 

This is just the beginning of many such meetings.  A part of me wishes the disease would progress faster so that my condition would be more obvious and I less embarrassed.  (Well, ok, it’s a really, really small part of me that wishes for a faster progression.)

My memory is increasingly being shredded; there large holes through which more and more is falling.  My symptoms are becoming more noticeable, and I’m glad that I will be sharing with my entire community at Eighth Day tomorrow and beginning to publish all these blog entries as a memoir in a week or two.