One day a couple of years ago we were at a funeral service for my great uncle. We saw a woman we knew and her son and daughter in law. We said hello to her and when we got in the car to drive to the repass my sister and I started talking about the woman and her family. My father told us he didn’t know that woman. We were surprised. We didn’t think it could be possible that my dad could forget this woman and her late husband.
“Daddy, don’t you remember Jesse’s sister married
Ester’s brother?” we asked.
“No,” he answered.
“But Daddy surely you remember David and Gilbert,”
we insisted.
“Kind of,” he answered.
“Do you remember David and Sandra?”
For some reason he did remember them, probably
because Sandra was a good friend of our older sister for many years and he had
seen them as recently as the baby showers for my kids 8 and 11 years earlier.
However no matter how many different ways we asked
him if he remembered David’s parents he did not. He even became irritated by
our questions until my sister signaled to me that we should stop asking.
The same thing continued to happen and I started
noticing a pattern. My father was forgetting people he didn’t really like in
the first place. My sister and I
marveled at this. How cool is that? To get old and forget people you never even
liked. It takes out all the stress of not liking people now if you’re not even
going to remember them later. Everyone I’ve told about it also think that it’s
the best thing to look forward to in our old age.
Unfortunately there’s also a bad side to forgetting.
He also forgets to take his medicine sometimes. It’s gotten to the point that I
can’t leave him the pill box with the entire week’s worth of pills because he
will take the wrong day, or take the night ones in the morning or he’ll take
them twice. So now I only leave him the medicine he needs to take. If I’m home
I can give him the medicine and watch him take it. If there isn’t any more
medicine on the kitchen table he doesn’t take anything twice.
Sometimes he forgets that he has a key to the dead
bolt and sits outside until I get home. He’ll insist that he came up to the
door and the door was locked and he couldn’t open it. Or I get home and his key
is in the door. Other times I’m at home and he comes home from his restaurant
and sits outside because he’ll say that no one was home to open the door, even
though he has a key, even if he didn’t knock on the door or ring the doorbell
or even if my car is obviously parked in the driveway.
Those are the scary times. The times when I worry.
When I worry that one day something will happen to him because he forgot to do
something. Especially now that I’m working full time. I know that it’s time to
either hire a care-giver to come to the house or he needs to go to an adult day
care facility but he’s still independent-thinking enough to not agree with that arrangement. He
doesn’t want someone else caring for him and he sees an adult day care as one step
away from a nursing home. So I struggle. I struggle with making him happy and
keeping him safe.
Then we have days and weeks where everything works
out fine. There are no mistakes with his medication. He comes and goes freely
without any problems or confusion with the door. And I fall into a comfort
thinking everything is okay.
It used to be that he was forgetting everything
recent but could still remember stories from long ago. Now it’s getting to where he’ll
tell me a story he’s told me before but he changes something in the story. He
told me a story about a man who lost both arms in an accident with a train and
he said that years later his brother saw the man and that he also lost both
legs. I ask how and he says he has no idea and that he never asked his brother.
But I know that he did and I know that he told me this story a long time ago
but now I can’t remember how the man lost his legs either.
I asked him one day if he found it sad that he
couldn’t remember people and he says no because he doesn’t know that he doesn’t
remember them. He just thinks he doesn’t know them. I ask him, “But what if I
tell you that for sure you knew that person. Does it make you sad then that you
don’t remember.”
“No,” he answers, “Because I don’t really believe
you.”
I find that comforting somehow. To think that at
least it doesn’t bother him and it doesn’t make him sad. I find it comforting
to think that maybe that’s what happens when we get old. We just forget and we
aren’t sad because we don’t think there’s anything to be sad about. 
