In the night

Last week while Annie and Story were with us, I was awakened by baby cries from downstairs. It seemed to last longer than the usual diaper change, so I nudged May and told her to see if Annie needed any help. She came back a few minutes later and I asked her what was wrong and she couldn't find the words to make a sentence. So I just rolled over and went back to sleep. 

Later in the night I was awakened by May, who was standing on the floor by my side of the bed. "Where do you want me?" she asked. I noticed she was wearing a robe, which meant she hadn't just gotten up to go to the bathroom. I pointed to her place in the bed and said "right here." As she climbed back into bed I asked where she had been. "I don't know," she said. 

This morning, just before dawn, I sat up to see what time it was. May woke up and looked at my pillow, where my head had been, and said "Oh my gosh, a cicada." I looked down and saw only a fold in the pillow case. I asked what she had seen and she said "a big bug." I switched on the bedside lamp and she looked, lifted the pillow, searched around and asked "where did it go?" I switched off the lamp and lay my head back down at the point of the cicada sighting and we both went back to sleep.  

Where we live

She's been asking again of late how we ended up in Chicago. I tell her the whole tale, basically recreating the 1990s. She seems to enjoy that story. Tonight, coming home from a movie in downtown Evanston, she looked around our suburban neighborhood with a troubled look on her face and finally asked, "Now do we ... where ... do we live in Evanston?" I assured her that we do. I'm not sure what the confusion was, but it seemed that she was having trouble connecting the downtown look we had just left with the suburban look all around us. 

Thought we had more than one

She came into the house and asked if we had any yard waste bags. I said no, but they sell them at the hardware store. She said she would walk over and get some. Some hours later she came into the house and said, "I thought we had more than one yard waste bag." I said if we have one, then we have more than one, because the only way we would have one would be that she bought it, and they sell them in bundles. I reminded her that the last time I had seen her, she was heading out to the hardware store to buy yard waste bags. But she couldn't remember if she had made it there, or if she had bought anything. I walked outside to where she had been working and found a filled yard waste bag and a few feet beyond it, the bundle that she had bought. I showed it to her and she went back to work. 

Later, as I was eating lunch, she came in and said, "I thought we had more than one..." and then shook her head and said, "Now I don't remember what I was going to ask about." I said, "You thought we had more than one ... yard waste bag?" Yes, that was it. I said we have a whole bundle and she asked where. I walked out to where she had been working and found the bundle leaning against the house. I brought it to her and she told me I was wonderful. 

A conversation about the future

I found her in the living room with the folder of information from the support group in her hand. She looked up and asked, "Am I just going to blunder into old age?" There are many wrong ways to answer this question, so I just kept my mouth shut. 

"I don't want to be one of those old people walking with a cane," she said. Three weeks ago, she was asking for Annie to come because she thought she was going to die within a matter of days. I didn't want to send us back in that direction, so again I didn't say anything. 

She put the folder down and said, "Actually, I don't want to talk about it." 

"Neither do I," I said. 

What did we do today?

We spent the day in Chicago. Sitting in 5 o'clock traffic she pointed at the radio and said, "Could you turn down...that?" I turned it down and this conversation began:

"I don't know what we did today."

"Metaphysically, or literally?"

"Literally. I don't know what we did all day."

"Well this is Wednesday. On Wednesdays we drive into Chicago and go to our support group in the morning. So that's how we started our day. When the session was over, it was lunch time. Do you remember where we ate?"

"No."

"We went to Water Tower Place and ate at Food Life. What did you have?"

"I don't know."

"Sesame chicken."

"Oh yeah."

"And I called yesterday to make appointments to get our hair cut, but they couldn't take us until 3 o'clock. So we had two hours to kill after lunch. What did we do?"

"I don't know."

"We went shopping. And then we took a cab to Mel's place and I got my hair cut and then he cut your hair. Then we took a cab back to the parking lot, and now we're driving home."

"Okay, thank you. I didn't know."

Thirty minutes later we're back in Evanston and she reaches over and turns the radio down herself.

"Okay, I've forgotten again. Help me remember."

"We went to our group session. Then we ate lunch. Then what?"

"We got our hair cut."

"No, we went shopping. You got some jeans and I got a computer bag."

"Oh, right."

"Then we got our hair cut and then we came home."

"Okay. Good. I think if we do this every day, I'll start to get my memory back."