Friday, May 06, 2005

Déjà vu, take two

I’m having trouble with my memory. Specifically, I seem to be leaving comments on blogs and then only later remembering that I’ve written exactly the same thing before. Or might have. I’m never quite sure. There’s just this sense of déjà vu, but only in retrospect. This would be nothing other than embarrassing (for me) and rude (towards the blogger), except that one of my grandmothers had Alzheimer’s disease, and I’m scared of getting it myself.

The symptoms of early dementia are the same ones you might also get with other things, like stress or depression. And there’s no test to tell whether you've got it, and no cure. Even if there was a test, I wouldn’t want to take it any way. Who’d want to know, if there’s nothing you can do about it?

I think maybe I’ve just got a weird brain. I remember incidentals, rather than the important things. This morning my (other) grandmother was telling me about the death of a woman who used to live locally; her husband used to deliver feed supplies to the farm here. I would have met both of them, probably many times. But I can’t remember her, or her husband, or their children, or even if they had any children. What I do remember – the only thing – is a big concrete step between their house and shed. A concrete step. The only thing I remember. It was just the right height to sit on, and it was in the shade of the shed, so it was cool. (Why I was ever at their house and sitting on their concrete step, I don’t know. Can’t remember. Obviously.)

So the thing is this: if I repeat comments on your blog, please forgive me. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I can’t remember, and mostly just that I’m weird.