For a number of months I seem to have lost my memories of my wife before she god AD. Even when we look at photos, I can’t recall how she acted or even how she smiled. I can’t recall her voice or her smile. All I remember is the LO I have now. Have any of you had this kind of memory failure? I don’t know if this is called “Caregiver Dementia” or what. I am 76 but my memory about every thing else seems good. I remember our two children when they were young, can see their smiles and even hear their voices. I have never heard this happening before so I thought you guys might help me. Wonder if it is just a man thing or what?
Bill, I don't think it's a man thing. Memories are so fleeting. We may remember things that weren't even true, we just want them to be true. You have been taking care of your DW for a long time and she may not have been herself for many years before that.
Oh, this must be disconcerting for you. I find if I don't push for a memory, it will crop up perhaps at a most unusual time. Then it hits you ~ how could I not have remembered that! You are probably very tired, as we all are, of this dementia thing and your mind just wants to rest a bit. Let it be...it will come back.
Oh my, you have hit on something that is very painful. It happened to me last year when we traveled to SF to visit our son. He and I took a walk, and he said that the last time he rememered Dad actually being Dad was in 2002, and he referenced the incident. It was like a sucker punch to my gut. The tears started flowing, because I realized I was getting used to my husband with AD, and was forgetting what he was like before.
I think God allows us to remember what is the best for us at certain times. Maybe He wants you to focus on what you have for the present, and not dwell on what was lost. I will bet He's saving them all up in a memory box for you to open up, after your Loved Ones journey.
Bill ....... MMarshall is right ...... I think we all fall into the place were our minds just need a little rest 'cuz we've got so much swirling around up there our mind gets weary.
I too find I'm having a hard time remembering *stuff* as quickly as I used to ...... but, given a little time it does pop back into my mind and I remember and visualize all the details well. I know I'm exhausted, suffering from sleep deprivation, physically and mentally worn to a frazzle so this is what I chalk my slowness at remembering up to. I'm not going to start worrying about this too ...... I just don't have any *worry time* left.
Bille, sometimes our reminders are so great with dealing with the disease and all that encounters, that our minds allow us to just close off that section that is painful. some of us, myself included, find it very difficult to look at photos of myself and DH before AD when our lives were so full and happy and so muchto look forward to. so to protect ourselves emotionally we shut out remembering those past times and all that was before. once your pain is lessened your mind can handle all that you fear, will find those memories once again along the way. my best as always, Divvi
Thank you for your thoughts. Bar Bra mentions "the stuff". That's exactly what I miss. I can not remember any conversations, any joys together, I can't even remember our arguments!!! My mind just seems to have blocked out the really personal stuff. I look forward to getting some stuff back. We have been married for 49 years and surely something should be there for me to remember with a smile on my face and a glow in my heart. I hope it does comeback someday because I know that so much is gone forever. I hate the thought of loosing our old life. It is hard enough loosing our life now.
Bill-in March my husband and I will have been married for 50 years. Something must have been good. Have three great kids. Except for pictures of smiling faces I can't get passed the bad times to remember the good ones. With FTD rages it is so hard to take satisfaction in a long time together. I hope when this is over we all can heal and remember the good.
That could be why you can't remember the past good times - it could make it harder to cope with the present. Remembering the past good would probably make the present more depressing. Our bodies and mind are great at creating ways for us to cope with the present.
I have discussed this with other members, but felt guilty that I can't remember what G was truly like before this mess. I surely recall good times for the last nearly 50 years, but I have lost HIM or the true memory of what he was..damn, but I search and it isn't there.Now he is this nearly childlike person i deal with 24/7 and wonder where it all went. I totaly lost it today for a minute..not his fault, just my not dealing with the situation at the time..he actually was understanding that it wasn't him but the bloody disease. I still search my being and try to recall the feelings I had before..not there.
Bill--I never really give it any thought but I have the same thing. We'll be married 59 years in March. I cannot recall the last time DH was himself. Very sad, isn't it. My heart goes out to you. My heart goes out to me, as well. We were watching a rerun of "Little House on the Prarie." He asked me no less that 10 times the name of the program. It is so hard to stay patient.
We have been invited to a birthday party for Saturday night. I've showed him the invitation several times. I have it on the mantle. He has known these people for over 35 years. He keeps asking who's the party for. What's the party for? When is the party? etc., etc., sometimes there won't be 2 minutes between questions. Last night I got fed up and snapped "It's Mary's birthday party--Saturday night--at their home." He got this realy hurt look on his face and said I wasn't being sweet. All I did was ask a simple question, he said. I said I was sorry.
He walked out of the room, came back in and said where are we going?
I think when you live with day to day changes in life, or a person, you tend to accept things as "normal" behavion deep inside. A good example of that is the world situation, TV shows, Hollywood behavior, the youth. Then you "wake up" some day and you have world changes we all despise and it is hard to remember all the little things that made up the good things years ago. Remember ladies, when we had our children we vowed NEVER to go through that again, then the pain becomes less and less over time and we remember the good parts of giving birth. Remember how our kids would "drive us crazy" when they were going through potty training, dining out, car trips, etc. and now we mostly remember the funny and GOOD things during that time. My grown children will ask me "Mom, did I used to do that?" and lots of time I truly can't remember.
I think after our loved ones are gone, the same thing will happen then. We will remember the good times and the bad times will fade somewhat.
Most of us caregivers live a very intense life, we are focused on the problems, issues, behaviors, anxiety and medications on a daily or even an hourly basis. The down hill slide continues like the ticks on a clock. We are so focused on the present and the immediate future that we don't have either the time or any room in our minds to focus on the past. I find I don't have much time to think about the past.
Over the last few days I have found my wife focusing on her past, she has been spending time looking through the many pictures we have taken over the last 30 years. She has been sorting them out and grouping some together that she asked me to send to her sister and some that she has given to her grand daughters. I don't know why this sudden interest in the past, maybe she is thinking about the good times she has had in her life and maybe this is a way of sharing them with others. She has some days when her mind is good and other days it is not so good.
jimmy, as I am now 71 I have sorted my pictures and just kept a few of the kids and gave the rest to them to keep. I have laid out my handmade quilts and let the kids choose the ones they wanted (they are nuts about our family quilts) and gave them to them with the exception of a couple I am borrowing to display.
I have made a list of items we have that have been passed down from parents and grandparents and marked who they originally belonged to. One day when they are all here I am going to let them choose - in rotation - by value- the ones they want when we are dead. None of them are valuable monetarily, just sentimental and they all want our family herirooms. I am going to keep most of them that I now have displayed but they will have them later. It was funny when they were choosing the quilts the girls wanted the old used ones instead of the new ones. Feed sack ones were very popular as were the ones my mother had made using pieces from their childhood clothes. The son got the new ones.
It is important to me that my children and grandchildren share in family memotoes and that is the reason I want to do it now. When my grandparents died my Mom and Dad only had things that had been given to them by their parents while they still lived and one family member got the rest. I think that is what your wife is doing and that is a good thing. The family members will cherish those things.
It's so interesting that others have the same feeling as I do. We've been together for almost 40 yrs, married for 32 of them, and we did wonderful things, took great trips, etc, but his memory is stuck at about 20 yrs old. he knows everyone, but constantly asks me how we met, etc. when we are with friends he asks them how he knows them. So I am really trying to live in the present with him. When he asks, when he looks at photos, etc, of course, I tell him, but, actually there's just no point in my thinking about what is no longer him. It just upsets me and then I start to cry over what I have lost. Our hearts still remember how it was when our LO was the man we fell in love with, but now he's a shadow of that person. If I constantly thought of what I've lost, of what he's lost, I would not be able to cope with the present. I'd be crying all the time over what was and is no longer. Kindly, our own brain gives us selective amnesia, yes, of course, if I think about it, I remember, but there's no point dwelling on it. When he's gone, I'll only remember the good times. It's like when you give birth, when the labor is over, you forget it. When this labor is over, only the good memories will surface, and God willing, we'll forget the rages and yelling which was not our LO at all, but the truculent 4 year old he's become.
Mary, it is starting to happen....but every once in a while the really bad stuff comes crushing down....a lot of times when I read what some of you are dealing with....and then last month I was visiting a friend in Alabama and we went to the NH to visit her husband and when I saw all these men in the various stages of AD I got all choked up and had to leave. The visual of the last few years of the bedridden, incontinent and totally dependent man are far easier to see than the healthy, whole man that was gone long ago. But, I don't dwell on the past....I did what I had to do.....took care of him the best that I could.....kept my sanity......and am enjoying life to the fullest.......Life is for the living.....just remember that....all of you.....none of our spouses would want us to suffer and die because of our caring for them.
Hey, thanks. I now feel a little better to know that I am not loosing my own mind. I agree that I have enough to handle to worry about my own memory of the good old times disapearance. I wish I could remember her but maybe later it will come back and be good for me then. Right now I just try to keep her happy. As they say, When Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!!!!!
WOW!! This website amazes me.No matter what happens or what I'm thinking I scroll thru these postings and WHAM there it is. Just today I realized that what my husband has become has become the norm. I have a hard time finding his essence. Of course I know he was fastidious, nice looking and the quickest wit I've ever known but I can't reach out and feel it anymore. I too believe it is our minds or maybe God protecting us somewhat from the horror we are living but now and then I would like to experience John again even if it is only in my mind. Hopefully these things will return to us when we really need them for comfort. cs
beethere responded to my request for data for the Memorial and at my request she posted a note on what she's experiencing since her LO passed away. In her own words, she answers this question. Go to the Memorial Thread and see what she has to say. Carosi
Thanks Carosi. That was definitely uplifting. I don't dwell on the missing memories but I do a lot of wishing. I just looked at her picture today and wanted some memories to come ub but nada. I also posted on the memory thread.
I've been searching through the vast sea of posts to understand a few things more. It's a dark clear night with just a few days of summer left and I'm listening to Tony Bennett "When Joanna Loved Me" over and over. It's one of the albums my parents had as I grew up and it reminds me of the danish furniture and the telefunken stereo and the black and white TV with the rabbit ears my father would fiddle with.
I remember you Dianne and I remember our lives. I have no trouble seeing you in your pretty little outfits with the short red hair and horn rimmed glasses waiting at Jane Street and St John's Road to walk you to school watching you walk towards me. I remember driving up to Killbear park with the tiny civic loaded with camping gear and the canoe tied to the roof. I remember my parents going to work and then getting up to go to university but knowing that the bus would be letting you off soon and you would be coming along the walkway to spend the day together instead.
I remember our first basement apartment and the two brownstones and the highrise up by York University before we bought that first townhouse. I remember moving in. I remember our honeymoon night and our honeymoon. I remember finally talking about children. I remember your mom living with us. I remember your father's favourite joke with Sammy and Lepiedus. I remember your look and how you used a sewing needle to scrape your teeth. I remember always opening the bathroom door on you until you finally stopped bothering to close it because I wanted zero distance.
I remember going birdwatching with you and Margaret Lawrence a frumpy lady in high galoshes who's books you loved. I remember carrying you when you twisted your ankle at Virgin Gorda through the surf. I remember you shy in the teddy you lovely person and I remember you skiing in Algonquin in the winter. I rarely gave you meaningful birthday or christmas gifts, but I suprised you often which is what I knew you really liked. How many times did we jump in the car and end up in Marblehead or Lake Placid or Quebec City or Virginia Beach or Washington or Montreal?
I also remember telling you that you had Alzheimer's. I'll always remember the one time you cried so hard and asked me what was going to happen. I remember you feinting dead away on Aricept and how badly your nose bled. I remember pretty much all of it. But I don't go there much now.
I remember how you look now a hundred year old lady in a wheelchair with your mouth open and a vacant stare. I remember crying in the car and not being able to drive for an hour after the meeting to put you into a home. I remember these last years in an empty void. Calling your name the way I used to to an empty house.
You last as long as you like. Whatever happens and whatever it costs I will watch over you. I'm also going down the road already. It's what we said and you know me. I didn't want this but it's here and I can't do anything but vigorously pursue a meaningful life. So long kid. Mi casa es su casa.
Wolf, I read your poignant post with deep thoughts and have great admiration for your real outlook on the life of a spouse with ALZ. We truly cannot do anything to stop it or reverse it. Thanks for sharing your memories of you dear Dianne who was but not longer is. Saying you will watch over her no matter what happens or what it costs is telling of your deep feelings for the life you shared with her in the past. Forge ahead with your life Wolf and enjoy.
Ten months after his death, I am still up at 3 or 4 a.m. Still can't sleep the night through. My mind wanders through the good times and the last ten years of the bad times. I love your remembrances of your lives together - and now apart - but still together. You're a good man, Wolf.
Wolf, it sounds like your life together was one that I have read about in romance novels. Could it be? Does that "true love" actually exist? If so, you have been one very lucky guy. Thanks for sharing!
The inability to remember. I've wondered, was this always his personality and I'm using "it's a disease" to separate myself and cope? By now I know there is something different and wrong, but how long has this been influencing who he is? Wolf's post urges me to recall the details of earlier time without the burden of looking for initial signs.
I do think our chemistry and our basic natures together was luck and that that's a big part of what we had. We fit really well together and that wasn't anything we did.
That's where I said goodbye to her. I was up at 4am too and I read that over and over knowing it was all in the short sentence "so long kid". The rest is there to demonstrate I remember us.
My job is to have a little fun. It's not far away that she will be gone and I will not be going there because I won't belong there anymore and a little fun will be all I have to look forward to.
It's the last thing Alzheimer's will teach me. How do I face my life partner's death. And it is also the last gasp on it's part except for this oft to be repeated phrase "I was...alzheimers".
I'm satisfied with what I was, what I did, and what I am now. I've grown because of this and even though I'm humbled by it - the truth is it's also thrilling. My past rarely defined what I did next and that once again is true. I feel the promise of things to come and pain can pull up a chair in front of the fire beside me. We know each other well and each comforts the other.
Find your good and ok memories. It grounds you. They are just as much in the tapestry of what we are as any bad memories are and with some will and desire we can find one that's meaningful and good. Doing that once means you have a new skill. Remembering the good things about my life were important I believe and also helped me diminish some of the bad memories. If you have any very old items like report cards or very early photos - go there and it will trigger. Learn to also shut things off when you need to and catch up. We have proven that we are powerful. Learning that about ourselves is extremely hard.
But you go ahead now and pick one thing and do that and it will then be done and that is power. Forget reward. It will come in it's time. Learn to use your power. Siphon off some of what you do and did for them and bottle it.
"I feel the promise of things to come and pain can pull up a chair in front of the fire beside me. We know each other well and each comforts the other".
Wolf, I am continually awed by your ability to express what's happening to you which resonates with all of us. You are a precious gift.
Wolf, your comments really match mine. Particularly "Whatever happens and whatever it costs I will watch over you." I often told my wife and others that we had such a great marriage we would have to pay for it sometime. AD was NOT how I planned to pay for all the joy we had in now 60 years of marriage. But we don't get to choose. All we can do is play the cards we are dealt.
Wolf, you express your sentiments with profound beauty. Well spoken...
Have you always been able to do this, or is this something you have found within yourself since the disease took over your life?
I forgot the original subject! My memories of our young years have faded, even when I look at my scrapbooks it seems a lifetime ago & almost unfamiliar. Dan was such a nice looking guy, happy, personable. All I can see now is a grumpy, unhappy, vacant-looking old man who dislikes personal hygiene (apparently!) i hope & pray that these images are not the ones I'll always remember....
Seeing the title of this discussion almost gave me an electric shock. I had the most marvelous thing happen a few weeks ago. My husband was a high school basketball coach when we first met and married over forty years ago. It was always his first love and I think he's regretted leaving it all those years ago for a career in sales, but he just felt he had to change professions to earn enough money to raise our family. We now live many hundreds of miles from where he taught and coached, but I recently found the high school's Facebook page and posted a message indicating that he was not in good health....no real details except to the students and former players who contacted me with messages for him. I received many expressions of appreciation for him. One of the emails completely blew me away. It was from one of his "boys" who expressed his belief that he would never be the success that he is today, professionally and as a father, if not for my husband's presence in his life during those years. He shared three funny and touching memories that snapped me back to those days and made me see, with great clarity, why I fell in love with Andy in the first place. He was funny, perceptive, kind, and a complete "straight arrow"....a man of real moral fiber. This filthy dementia came on so gradually that it wasn't just HIS brain cells that were dying off...it was my view of him. He's now in a nursing home and in the severe stages of the disease. It's claiming him quickly. Hospice has been called in just this past week. There are other details of our situation, but that's not the point of this post. I know that, when the time comes, that message will be read at Andy's memorial. It came at time when I needed it so much to put MY perspective back in focus.
Joy, it sounds like Andy isn't the only straight arrow in the family.
My last memories of my vibrant and lively mother is a shrunken mouse nibbling the KFC I snuck her in like an animal. And every time I go here like now I add another layer of opaque by reminding myself this is not important because while it is part of her story - it is not what my mother was and cared about being. It just isn't important.
"It wasn't just HIS brain cells dying off...it was my view of him".
My mother is dead six years now and is not in the boxes of her things my sister goes through looking for her. She is confused that our mother dying is about her where obviously our mother dying is about me (just kidding - ahh sibling rivalry).
I have quietly told my wife several times don't worry I will remember the real you - not the husks of our battles with this disease where we are far along. She doesn't know what I'm saying despite the staff thinking she got excited hearing her sister was coming for a visit. My wife doesn't understand what an elbow is. But the staff have to have ways to cope.
We can change our minds, we can change our viewpoint, and we can change our memory of things. None of those are hard and we do them all the time. And we do them exactly the moment we decide to. Sometimes an event happens that triggers the extensive viewpoint changes and more often it's one brick at a time where we make up our minds and then work at it.
I don't bother my sister about her boxes much. We talk a lot on the phone these days and it was only a few years ago she asked me why I didn't defend her when the actually seriously bad thing happened to her. My sister was molested by my grandfather. When she told mom and dad no one did anything. I didn't have an answer but I do now. I brought it up again and told her I was very sorry because thinking about it I only realized then how serious and damaging this was. It's the first question I would ask my parents now. How could we all have brushed this under the table? Whenever our grandparents come up in conversation and they do because they were in our lives - I pounce on him. I get angry at him right on the phone and call him every name in the book. I let my sister know that he was pathetic and preyed on the innocent. That my sister was only a victim and whatever she did she could not be held accountable anymore than we could hold her own grandaughter responsible if she were molested. That sunk in but there is a great deal of work still to do.
My memories are one thing. I am a fortunate man though because I don't buy that anything is about me and never have. I'm a tourist like everybody else and if they need to think that the random things that happen to them is important in and of itself they are welcome to do so. I am not a member of that club. I am fortunate because I have inside unasked for a world view that never takes a moment off (which I didn't ask for either). It tells me what's important compared to what and while my weeping for my Dianne is real and earned - changing my sister's memory is what matters.
I tell this story not because I'm a good person. I tell this story because I abandoned her in such a thing. And that my concerns and experience with memory are not just with a disease. I am not the victim of how I happen to remember. I am the victim of what I thnk and believe.
I made a joke to my sister some months ago. I told her I had an inferiority complex about our grandfather the preyer of the innocent. What was wrong with me? I asked her since he and I often went fishing or butterfly catching and all kinds of things - alone. Maybe I should have worn a dress I joked. She laughed for the first time on this subject.
All memory a human being has is personalized. As we go through this there often aren't the energy cycles to think about these things. The day comes where we will want to be able to accept more and move forward more. On that day you will be engaging in this topic. Managing memory into meaning.
Wolf.........I just want you to know how much I appreciate your writings here. I can't imagine How you come up with all these subjects and how they relate to our lives.
I particularly like the one you contributed on this thread a couple days ago where you were listing all your wonderful memories of your Dianne. You started each sentence with the words "I remember"..... Like.... I remember..........I remember.........I remember.........
For me it was extremely touching, and brought back so many of my own memories. I read it over and over and over, and am still reading it......GeorgieBoy
I look at the pictures taken in our early years of traveling then camping with kids. I can't remember them being fun even though I am sure we had fun. I can only remember the fun of traveling and seeing things - when I could get him to stop. He was the type that once he started driving, he didn't stop often. Part of it was because when we would go back east to visit his family we had a two week vacation which meant non=stop driving: him during the day and me during the night cause I could stay awake.
Looking at the pictures are like looking at pictures taken by other family members where I can see the smiles but not know what was going on, if they were really enjoying themselves. I can not imagine there ever coming a time when there will be good memories. In fact, most of my life memories are just what is in pictures which I don't look at often cause they are just pictures.
Off topic: Wolf - don't feel bad blame yourself. Back in those days they did not tell and if they did, like with your sister it was 'so what'. My mom, my two older sisters and who knows how many other females cousins were all sexually abused by an uncle. His wife, my mom's sister was 20 years older than my mom, so she was still young when they married. I was the only one that would stand between him and my younger sister (8 years younger) to make sure she did not become a victim. My mom and aunt knew what he was doing, but as my mom told me later - you just kept quiet back then. When I was 12 my sister 6 years older than me had a pervert boyfriend. He raped me then proceeded to torment me for the next 10+ years threatening to do it again. When I finally told my hb in 1985 he blamed me. Earlier I found out when my younger sister was 12, after I married and left, he tried to rape her but got away. She told but nothing was done. When she told me I blamed myself for years because if I had told it might have saved her.
Hi George, I have no idea why anybody is the way they are. I'm glad some of the ideas I reopened this thread for resonate with some of you. This is how I think and what I'm going through just like it has been for 4 years. If there is a difference which a couple of people have mentioned now - it may be that I feel better and more clear headed these days.
Let me explain 'feel better and more clear headed these days'. Ordinary people would consider how I feel now to be terrible and debilitating but from where I was this is pretty good and going in the right direction.
The comments on what I've said here for which I thank everyone sincerely have made me step back and wonder what people must have thought about my always being in the valley and leaving a trail of bodies and so on. I've made myself a child and checked myself into my own insane asylum. I've acknowledged that Alzheimer's has made me become a better man. I've always known though that people who can naturally play the piano well and who try to turn that into a big deal for themselves are idiots.
It's accurate enough to say I think God gave me a good mind and I get to live with it and even though I fed it, it would have been impossible not to and there isn't much more or less to it than that. I can't play the piano to save my life though.
Charlotte, I thought of you when I was posting that. There is no excuse. I know what you're saying. I've had a dozen women talk to me about their own abuses. They usually say "I don't know why I'm telling you this" but I do. I have that face. And even though I knew all this I never bothered to go back and uncover my own complicity. Things either mean something or they don't and I let my sister down very badly and no other thing is true now that I have learned.
These comments about the abuse - it's so true that nobody EVER mentioned those things. I had one of "those" uncles. I knew it was wrong, but too embarrassed (or shy) to say anything. Several years later, when the s*#t hit the fan, it was a very difficult time in the family, but no one did anything - still! Waaay on down the road, within the last 20 years or so, more & more has come to the surface. Nobody ever realized how widespread it was. It was a blessing for all when he died at age 53. He ruined a lot of women's lives.
Mim, long ago my aunt slapped me hard across the face when the girls said I'd done something (not involving anything sexual) and the truth was (as I remember) I hadn't. That's not sexual abuse but it was a wrong thing perpetrated by an adult on a child.
What is clear to me from the victims who've talked to me is that there is some sort of association shame in which apparently the child having their head kicked is guilty of having their face there.
I'm sorry about your experiences and the fact that your uncle was a troll. Perhaps real women scared him. When i ran to my mother sobbing I'd been slapped and my aunt couldn't do that, my mother slapped me too. Solidarity among the coven I imagine.
The thing about memories is that they are a piano. The keys represent the memories and the piano is the mind ready to do as bidden and while the fingers of the user may be untrained - they can be.
The japanese love their rock gardens. Perhaps all small white stones lovingly evened with a single round black stone off center in the garden. If someone distrubs the stones they come and smooth them back into place. Order is not created from chaos but this place is always tended to the same state.
"This place is sacred" I declare and my mind listens (the hippocampus lives for this stuff). What should I do with this sacred place I ask myself. "I will tell you" I answer, "for now make the garden".
And one day like any other day I announced that there would be five pure things placed into the garden and that no other things would clutter up this garden. My mind was ready to do this at once but I hadn't picked the five things yet. What do I do when we know what they are? My mind wandered. Do I polish them or worship them?
"Neither" I answered. Put them there as they are and then do nothing. The exercise is to find them and in searching for value to bring feeling back into my whithered but richly experienced hand.
My mind points out that we have depression so skipping through the woods of our memories is unlikely but I laugh. "They don't have to be pollyanna and goldilocks skipping" I answer myself. "They have to be memories that I really like"
You mean like Katherine Hepburn movie scenes? My mind ponders. "Or crickets in a hot summer farmer's field" I answer. Open your mind up I tell my mind. Like the time you, Tom, and Brian had snorkled so far up the creek you got out in barefeet at the railroad bridge and while you were crossing it a train whistled and suddenly you were all hurrying trying not to step through the open rail slats as the bridge started shaking and the next whistle sounded way too close. Memories like that? My mind wonders.
That can be the first thing in the garden for now I answer smiling.
...
(about a week later)
"What about the pink hippo dance in Dumbo?" Nope "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 'You just keep thinking there Butch that's what you're good at". Nope "What about the time you walked naked into that room full of people drying your hair?" Nope "Racing down St Mark's hill on your bike?" Nope "Watching John fall and break his nose?" Nope. Not the right zen. "The three cousins taking turns kissing you on Uncle Paul's farm in Dearborn?" Hmmm. "Steering out of the path of that oncoming car at high speed in the pouring rain" No. "What about when the running chainsaw fell out of the tree and bounced around you?" Nope. "Listening to Sgt Pepper for the first time with Nancy Clive?" That was a good day. "The way Dianne laughed and the face she made" Book it Dano. Find it so I can hear it. "The Elvis Presley lookalike golf tournament?" Nope "Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five?" Nope "First banana split?" Nope "Weekend at Bernies? Come on Weekend at Bernies?" Nope "Walking through that lightning storm in the corn field?" Nope
Wolf, I have no doubt that you will find five good memories. Its the journey through memory lane that is important.
My trip in September stirred a few of these, particularly when I stopped and stared at our family home. Not all of the memories that surfaced were pleasant, but I did live there for 18 years, so there had to be a few. And the drive past my grandparent's house, and my great Aunt Minnie's house. I remember rollerskating from grandma's place to great Aunt Minnies' place, and my reward was a fresh picked apple. Her dining room always smelled of fresh apples.
Road signs reminded me of the time my DH and I went camping in my parent's VW van. Sunshine and flowers.
There are some good memories - and they will come.
Please don't misunderstand - the "uncle thing" was a part of my life that I won't forget, but I've truly forgiven him from my heart. I hold no contempt for him. I see him now as a sick, sick person who was trying to lead a double life - that of a family man & the other him. He did so much more damage to others that I have little to complain about.
I have so many good memories of my childhood, & young adulthood, that they outweigh the bad. I think I really did have a kind of "Happy Days" youth, except for that one part. I'm trying desperately to recall the good times with Dan, before the last 15 or so years. He started changing way back then, but nothing severe. I just thought he was becoming a crabby old man......little did I know. We had our good times, but the not so good times seem to crowd those from my memory. I hold a lot of resentment toward him for disappointments & such. Funny how I have completely forgiven my uncle, but can't quite seem to completely do that for the man I loved so much. And I use the word love in the past tense, just the way I feel I guess.
Well now.......didn't mean to write a book! Hope I didn't wander too far off the path again....I tend to do that. :)