Moving Dementia

Poor old Will. He has, as Carol Brady would say, the sniffles. Unlike the Brady's, we did not send him to bed early and cancel our evening plans. I did however, attempt to find him some Sudafed. I knew right where it was too. I headed into my bathroom to retrieve it from the medicine cabinet behind my mirror. Imagine my surprise when I attempted to open the mirrored door, only to realize that I don't have a medicine cabinet behind the mirror in my bathroom. I stood there in my bathroom for a moment, completely baffled and disoriented. Then I remembered. Silly me, I thought. The medicine cabinet is in the OTHER bathroom. So I headed into the other bathroom, and there was indeed a medicine cabinet there, but no Sudafed. Which is odd, because I have a distinct memory of putting that Sudafed in a medicine cabinet behind a mirror. We had one like that in our old house, but we didn't keep the Sudafed there. At least I don't think we kept it there. I think we kept it in the kitchen. It is all beginning to run together in a most congealed and mired glob of confusion in my brain.

We also find ourselves doing weird things like banging into walls and setting things on furniture that isn't there. When you have lived in a house for 12 years, you can pretty much walk around in the dark and know exactly where you are. You know, without counting how many more steps it is to the bathroom and the exact height of the toilet. You know right where the light switch is on the wall, and exactly where to stand to be able to literally fall into bed. And you don't even really know that you know those things until suddenly everything is different. These days, we are groping for light switches that aren't where they are supposed to be, knocking our hands on walls that are suddenly in different places, and looking for shelves that have just disappeared. I am just thankful that nobody has fallen down the stairs that are right where the hall used to be. Now if we can just get used to the idea that there are two other working toilets in the house, we could all stop pacing in front of the bathroom door.

I never did find that Sudafed. It is behind a mirror somewhere, I just know it. Our poor old Will had to gag down some of the liquid stuff.