My memory is so bad! How bad is it? How bad is what?

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

I have an appointment on November 19 at 3:30 p.m. It says so right here — on the pad of paper I keep beside my laptop in my office. It is circled in red so I don’t forget to put it in my calendar. Well done me. Now if I could only remember who the appointment is with. I distinctly remember phoning someone and arranging this booking and being surprised that I couldn’t get in sooner.

It isn’t my doctor, nor my dentist (that’s today), not my editor, it’s too late in the day for lunch with a friend, and my hair stylist isn’t until November 26. Maybe it’s with the memory clinic. Hell if I can remember!

My mother is 103 and suffers from dementia. But we were told it was due to her coming down with COVID and it does not run in our family. So what’s my problem?

My husband thinks it might be a delayed reaction caused by us older babyboomers chasing the DDT fog trucks down the streets of Southern Ontario back in the 1950s, spewing their contents into our faces. Now wasn’t that a good idea! Playing in the murderous fog, filling our lungs with poison. I can’t remember if it was to kill the mosquitoes or the weeds. But it was certainly killing something since it’s now banned in Canada.

Or maybe it’s from the gravel and cement playground surfaces of yester years — falling head first off the monkey bars and swings. Broken bones and badly scraped knees were common but head injuries were not a thing. Have you seen what they use today? I looked it up. “Common playground materials include rubber mulch, sand, wood chips, artificial grass, poured-in-place rubber, natural grass, pea gravel, and foam tiles.” Children just bounce. Parents nowadays are either raising wimps or just trying to prevent their kids from future disabilities. Can’t exactly argue with that.

Maybe it’s from dropping LSD in my teens. Watching all those “things” crawling and slithering up and down my friend’s living room walls for hours on end was just a bit of fun. Or was it?

Here’s another one. Right here, written in my Medium drafts, is a reminder I should write a story about Highways 16 and 93. I have absolutely no recollection of writing that note nor what the story was supposed to be about. Did aliens land there, treasure buried there, or did I run over some small, unsuspecting creature? It couldn’t be the latter as I would remember such a heinous crime. What does it mean?

I have wandered willy-nilly around my home searching for my iPhone, getting madder by the minute. I bought myself a lanyard that is designed for people like me and when I travel, I attach my iPhone and wear it religiously. Problem solved. I have a tendency to leave my iPhone in restaurants, stores, basically everywhere I get distracted. Fortunately, to date, it has always come back to me in the hands of some kind and honest person. I don’t use the lanyard at home, so should I misplace the silly thing, I get my husband to phone me (he's much easier to find in front of the TV.) And then my bum starts vibrating reminding me that I put it in my jeans back pocket. Doh!

At night when I come up with a story idea I want to remember, I send emails to myself rather than wake my husband by turning on the bedside light. I’ll put in a word or two and firmly believe that, come morning, those words will remind me of the inspirational idea I had at 1:00 a.m. Come morning, I wake up and yup, no clue. Maybe that’s what happened to the highways storyline.

Last year, my husband and I drove to Jasper Park Lodge to meet up with our daughter and her partner for a Christmas holiday. Before leaving Banff, my husband asked what the road conditions were like if we took the 3-1/2 hour scenic route from Banff to Jasper. I got out my phone, looked at the map and told him it was fine. It would be a lovely drive! Well, four white knuckle-busting hours later, we arrived at the Lodge. The roads were terrible — snow-covered and icy. “Wow,” declared my husband wiping the perspiration from his brow. “Did they ever get that wrong!” I agreed and showed him my phone’s app indicating blue conditions all the way. “Wendy, blue means travel is not recommended.” Didn’t I read some where the opposite? Didn’t blue mean sunny, blue skies and summer conditions? Oops!

This is such a frustrating part of the aging process so it is imperative I take steps to keep myself organized. These are quirks that make me, me, and I am learning to live with them as I navigate life on the north side of 60. I now use many clever workarounds in my daily life: Making lists, being descriptive in notes to myself, and thoroughly understanding what my apps are trying to tell me. If I follow these steps, I am still a pretty capable person.

I have apps for lists; electronic calendars for birthdays, events, and appointments; an app for passwords; and even an app for finding my phone should I ever take the time to read the instructions. My life flows along like a river that knows exactly where it is going. It’s all those tributaries and creeks that I insist on stopping for that are messing me up.

(originally published for Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age)