What's it all about?

January 9, 2012

Does everyone have days when they wish it were over? Does anyone else feel too tired, physically, mentally, spiritually to put on the good face and interact with the world?

Is it Alzheimer's, old age, depression, laziness, ennui, or just reality. It is coming. Faster every day. I forget more. The fog is denser. Interest in other people and their problems—and joys—diminishes, flickers, fails.

Whatever it is, I need to document it now, as well as I can, because I feel the day  coming when I will be unable to do so anymore.

I have heard it said, I have said it myself, that the blessing of Alzheimer's is that the victim is unaware of his loss. Not so.

From the first hint—misplacing your car keys, finding yourself lost in a once familiar neighborhood, forgetting when exactly your children were born, but still able to figure it out mathematically, the fear is there. I try to suppress it.

Others say, and I try to believe, that these lapses of memory are common to those of a certain age.

Old people talk among themselves, the older the person, usually, the more forthcoming he is about his own symptoms.

If one is fortunate, has enough money, strength, energy, one can avoid those old people and pretend to be normal for a while.

Among the young though, is it more obvious that I am not with it anymore? Of course. Would it be better to join the mindless shufflers, to “go gentle into that good night?” The truth is, there comes a time when one is unable to summon the strength to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”

It is the greatest fear of this, my, generation. We have seen it when it was called senile dementia. We have seen grandparents, parents, the lost on the streets slowly leaving our reality and drifting to another place. Is it another place in their interior being? Is the 'real' person still in there, somewhere, unable to break through the wall of fog?  Is that worse than death? Or is it some sort of unknowing, peaceful nonexistence?

I'm tired today. I hit wrong keys on a machine that I once operated deftly and proficiently. I hit wrong keys over and over again. I feel angry. I feel afraid. I feel stupid. This cannot be happening to me. I am physically healthy and relatively strong, for my age. I am attractive, still, in my way. I have had a young lover.

Do my friends, my family, the people I meet on the street notice my gradual mental disintegration? Do they humor me but whisper their concerns among themselves? Do they discuss how long to wait before limiting my freedom to wander, to explore, to make new mistakes?

Will I, before long, be incoherent on the streets and need to be rescued by those whose obligation it is to love me? Will they feel the necessity to keep me safe from myself?

Some days, more and more days, I can't recall why I felt it necessary to force myself to walk miles every day, to dress attractively, to live a healthy lifestyle, to color and cut my hair regularly.

Or, is this just another bad day? Will tomorrow be better? Will I forget today's melancholy, today's sense of an approaching, inevitable helplessness.

I will get dressed now, I will go out to walk on the streets again, I will eat a balanced meal, I will pretend to be a full participant in this life.

At first it will be an act, a pretense, a great effort, but perhaps it will awaken the spirit within me once again. Perhaps tomorrow the old me will return to chatter and play and embark on new adventures.

I will continue the good fight, for a while, as long as I can manage. It grows harder each day.
With gratitude to and admiration of davidly