Losing My Mind

I often joke about losing my mind, losing my marbles. Well, technically, I did lose my marbles once, at the ticket booth at a Pow-wow, with my daughters and several dozen strangers there to witness. I have this horrible habit of putting things in my purse until I have time to find a good place for them. I was a daycare provider at the time and someone's child, might even have been mine, had thrown a marble at a window and cracked it. Confiscating the marbles, I dropped the bagful in my purse. Days later at the Pow-wow I had to dig and dig to find my wallet. Suddenly the marbles opened and began to spill everywhere.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but I think you are losing your marbles," the helpful cashier says. My daughters were just old enough to get it and haven't let me live it down.

But I digress.

Alzheimer's doesn't run in my family, nor does dementia. Losing one's train of thought does. I have inhertied my mother's tendency to embellish a tale so fully with details that the details become the better part of the story. It's very entertaining but makes it difficult to make a point. In almost every conversation, my mother reaches a point where she says, "Now, where was I going with this?"

It came to me one day. "Mom, you need to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find your way back to your topic."

I haven't reached that point yet. Or won't admit to it. I know what I set out to say here. I had a woman on my mind who has just had to put her husband in a nursing home, as his Alzheimer's has gotten beyond her ability to keep him safe. He still has some awareness of reality at times and knows his mind is retreating into recesses from which he will one day never come back.

That thought terrifies me! I know my body will fail with time, should I be lucky enough to have the time. I have seen what aging does to the mind and I want so badly to steer away from that path. I may soon begin hording breadcrumbs, or writing key thoughts on little notecards that I can whip out like the Best Writer at the Oscar's. I'll buy myself a St. Bernard and fill his keg with all my scribbles of phrases I felt important enough to note, or hire a trail guide. Maybe I need to post a map above my computer, "You Are Here."

It could work. I'll probably be telling the same three tales over and over, as my mother does. All I will need is a well-marked trail to get me to the end of my path.