Posted the first day of Advent (December 1st)…also a numberphile’s happy date 12/1/21…I could play those notes on the piano! 🙂 If’n the date was a song, it would sound like the beginning of Fur Elise.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. – Romans 12:1
Happy Wednesday, friends! Happy first day of Advent/the Christmas season. Happy middle of Hanukkah week and Kwanza and Festivus month and shop-til-you-drop month…and the rest as well. Did I forget anything? Vaccine booster month? I forget the list…
Speaking of forgetting, this topic may make this a little bit of a downer article (Sorry in advance 🙁 ), with a sprinkle of encouragement. I was considering writing today about mom’s favorite Christmas song. I mean, she played the piano since Ike was president…. surely she had a memorable Christmas playlist, of which I could draw out and shoehorn in an article?!?! However, sadly, I can’t remember which she would have found to be her favorite. In fact, the last time I remember her playing any Christmas song was about 2 years ago in the memory unit she accidentally combined “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” with the ole Christian hymn “He Touched Me”. It was an accidental mashup that wrecked me at the time. While we thought it was quite sad then, I would kill to have her be able to even mess up songs again now. Piano is her happy place.
This lack of remembering her favorite Christmas song was the tip of the iceberg of what I have already forgotten. That is one of the challenging things about losing someone…even if they are sitting right next to you and cannot communicate…once a memory is gone, it is gone. I hate that so much and it makes me want a cure even more. 🙁 No more homemade syrup recipe. No more calling me Dune Buggy or Punkin’ (childhood nicknames). No more retelling the old stories. The memories are “in there, somewhere”, but she is no longer of communicating any words or actions with which to share them. Terrible. Just terrible.
So, where is the encouragement, blog boy? Allow it to be encouraging that I had over 40 years with her during which I could have written down more, recorded more, videoed more, and told her more. Let that encourage you to live in the now and enjoy every second. Let that be encouragement to document things however you can, but not to the expense of living them. (We all know that guy that misses everything because he is too busy taking pictures to enjoy the object of the pictures. Don’t be him…or me. Be the one who lives with no regret and soaks up all you can. You and I are on the clock…and we have a limited time available with everyone around us. Make the most of every moment! And, while you are at it, help me fight off this stupid disease.
#EndALZ
I was fortunate today to attend a virtual Clinicopathologic Conference at a Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Don’t feel bad…spell check, much like many words that I coin, doesn’t even recognize the word Clinicopathologic. It breaks down such that it means something akin to “clinical”+”something medical that killed someone”. What it is, functionally, is a bunch of folks that are an extra digit on the IQ scale smarter than I am studying a case together from the person’s diagnosis/health history until their autopsy. The idea is to evaluate the original diagnosis, discuss the cause(s?) of death, and to learn as a group. I sit like a dork in the corner of the room with my MBA and a star-struck look on my face while they hash it out using terms some of which would have to be Mandarin, Latin, and Klingon mixed up, because I struggle and Google until my fingers bleed. It is fascinating, though, and very encouraging. One analogy a brilliant gentleman used was that the slice of brain matter he was showing looked like a good tree, not a bad one. In dementia, if you think of neurons and synapses as being tree shaped, you want winter trees (ones with no leaves), not fluffy ones all plaqued up with leaves. The poor (anonymous) lady whom was the object of the study had a good number of leafy trees and her body needed rid of them and had nobody who could shake them out. But, even in her demise, she was advancing science and making the next diagnosis even more accurate. For that, I thank you, Mrs. J. Very interesting time. 🙂
Update: Nothing today. Yesterday mom ate well. When she eats she is more awake than other times, so I am going to shoot to visit at noon and 5 when possible. I really wish you could know mom…you would love her. 🙂
