1135 Old Dailies

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Whoop! I got up early enough to take stuff to the recycle center today. About 40 lbs of glass, a large bag of plastic, two grocery bags of newspaper, and two of "clean" paper. And an 18" stack of flattened corrugated boxes. I can move in the kitchen again.

I don't understand where all those boxes came from - one from the shredder, one from the new TV, a few book purchases from Amazon, but the rest? I don't know.

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Looking for a small spiral notebook to take to the museum yesterday, I found my Dailies from 1999 and 2000. I used to write down every evening what had happened that day. I'd done that for years. No philosophizing, no opinions, just a list of things done. At the bottom of each page I made a list of "to do"s for the next day. It worked well. I was always able to look back to see when orders were placed, forms mailed, items bought, errands run. Looking through them, I am amazed at how much I accomplished every day.

The Dailies were not kept after December 2000, because things got so hectic with Jay's illness that I lived by little slips of paper and file folders, and I spent very little time at home. Mostly I was in hospitals, on the phone, or on the road. And then after Jay died, I never got back to it. Maybe I should restart. It might get my tail in gear again.

The 2000 Daily has reminded me of how strange Jay was in 2000. I had forgotten.

In May 2000, he decided to cut back the raspberries spreading into the yard from the woods. I happened to glance outside and found that he was cutting everything, including good shrubs, young trees, flowers, everything. Like his mind said "Cut", and the governor was off.

Along about July he started changing lightbulbs. If you didn't keep him occupied with other stuff, if he got to loose ends, he'd start changing light bulbs. When we went to the store, he'd insist on buying more light bulbs. The bulbs weren't burned out - I'd retrieve them from the garbage - it's just like he'd forget to flip the light switch, decide the bulb was out, and replace it. That explains why I now have a few hundred light bulbs in the pantry. Funny how I'd forgotten that.

We used to go to garage sales on weekends. I'd drive and he'd navigate. Along about August he lost the ability to read maps. He could find streets on the map and trace the route to get there, but he couldn't apply it to the roads we were on. We'd come up to a "Y", and I'd ask "Which way?", and he couldn't figure it out. About this same time he could no longer read a calendar, or do the binary search required to find a word in the dictionary. And no matter where we went, even just up the road to the deli, he thought we had crossed the river.

In September, he lost doors and drawers. If they were closed, they became solid walls to him. He didn't know how to get to the other side of them, or in some cases, that there even was anything on the other side. If you opened them for him, he'd leave them open, even the shower stall door. He couldn't figure out how to keep the water in the shower stall.

In late September, he sometimes got lost in the house. If he was tired, he couldn't find the bedroom from the dining room. We didn't dare close bathroom doors.

It was in October that he woke me in the middle of the night to tell me that there was someone else in bed with us. I asked who, where, and he pointed to his left arm and whispered "There. That's his arm." He didn't recognize his left arm. He could move it, use the hand to pick things up, but didn't recognize it, which was very confusing to him. He kept hitting it, like he wanted it to go away.

By November he could no longer dress himself. He would dress his right side, but neglect the left, and of course his clothing wouldn't stay on, and he couldn't figure out why not. He looked so cute coming out to the kitchen for breakfast with his robe on his right side, the belt tied neatly around his waist, but the left side completely naked, and the left half of the robe dragging on the floor behind him. By December, however, he couldn't remember how to tie a knot, so the robe wouldn't stay on at all.

And yet, some parts of his mind were as sharp as ever. It was during this time that he completed work on the invention application (the one that was finally granted last fall), and his old workmates still depended on him for telephone consultation on highly technical matters.

Some things were lost, well, more like hidden, since his logical powers didn't work in the hidden areas, but what hadn't been lost was as good as ever.

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I read an ad for a toy that "flies as far as a football field". I'm wondering, just how far can a football field fly?
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