By the Rivers of My Memory by Sal Moriarty

The present moment is unlike the memory of it. Remembering is not the negative of forgetting. Remembering is a form of forgetting. Milan Kundera

I'm never gonna know what you go through

All the things I say and do

All the hurt and all the pain

One thing selfishly remains

I'm not gonna miss you

I'm Not Gonna Miss You / Glen Campbell & Julian Raymond

For those who don't know, the song lyrics above are from one of the last recordings of Glen Campbell (if you don't know who he is, well, not much I can do for you). He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease late in life, and that's what the song is about; it's a candid farewell to wife, children and loved ones. It's darkly humorous. I'm leaving before my body does, and it's yours to deal with it. I won't care.

The most obvious symptom of Alzheimer's Disease is dementia.

I've been thinking a lot about dementia lately (see what I did there?). About the time the pandemic rolled into our lives, so did dementia. First, my dad, then my mom. It was sad, to be sure, but they had long, healthy lives before the affliction descended on them in their eighties. I was back home in Louisiana, and mostly experienced its effects via wild late night phone calls from my mother. My sister was next door to it all and bore the brunt of its most heinous manifestations.

For me, selfishly, dementia is more difficult to wrap my head around because it happened to a relatively young woman, the one I love. Dementia has many sources, not just Alzheimer's, and when it draws a bead on a person in the prime of life, it's like your worst nightmare multiplied by a factor you can't comprehend. If you are in close enough proximity to it, you silently scoff at those who fear hell.

I would guess losing a loved one to disease (not related to dementia) over the course of months or years, or even losing someone suddenly, has little impact on how those human beings are remembered in the long haul. If they maintained their basic personality traits, senses of humor, innate quirks and shared memories till the end, they will be remembered for who they were; with dementia, the worry is the traits that made the person special will become so eroded, so degraded, that at some point, you will be unable to remember the real human being at all. And that is terrifying.

So, what do you do?

Well, sometimes it's as simple as saying to yourself, I'm just not going to think about that now. You can table almost any thought for a while, and if you're in a restaurant, worried you might be about to experience some sort of episode, you table that thought. Some, I hear, pray. If you're praying for comfort, and it helps, God bless. If you're praying for a cure, I humbly recommend re-directing that energy, in the form of a check to a reputable medical research establishment.

For me, there is some, if not comfort, peace in acceptance. No baloney. It is what it is, just accepting the fact that, at some point, she's not gonna miss me. When sympathetic onlookers offer their best wishes (proverbial “thoughts and prayers”), just smile and nod (one of the keys to getting along in life, my dad used to say). Hard times are not in the distance. They are here.

So why even write about it? If there's no solution and it will spell the end for those so afflicted, and their closest loved ones, why go there? Maybe this, a word of advice from an infinitely more articulate man than myself, for those of you not yet on this highway:

Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you. Old Friends / Bookends – Paul Simon

By the way, for the uninitiated, if you're looking for a great Glen Campbell song (there are many), I recommend Gentle On My Mind (see what I did there?).