The Lost Mind

1

My oldest daughter was in first or second grade when it happened. My dad died. He was 76, born in 1897, married later in life. He was nine years older than my mom. He was the company doctor at a factory, and when another doctor in the city retired, he sold his practice to my dad. My mom had been a grade school teacher. There were four of us kids, and, eventually, there would be thirteen grandchildren.

We grew up in a factory town, where the biggest employers were the hospitals and the factory. I was an out of control child and a terrible teenager. My mom and dad started sending me away to camp for the summers when I was around eight or nine. I cut off my younger sister's curls, and she sobbed. You'd think I'd killed her cat. I think my mom was so tired of dealing with four kids that disciplining me all the time pushed her to her limits.

It was assumed I would go to medical school, but I learned I didn't have a stomach for it. My younger brother, the youngest of the four of us, had the stomach for it. I became a biology teacher. When I began teaching, I had students just like I'd been, and I quickly understood why my parents sent me away for the summers—I had been a nightmare.

My college major had been biology, but in the 1950s, we had to declare plant or animal biology. Plant biology back in 1960 was called botany. That was me, the football playing, beer-swilling, womanizing, fraternity brother botanist. The plants, though, in their simple beauty were so much more than what seemed like delicate composition. They fed, clothed, sheltered, and ministered to our health and mental well-being. It worked for me, and I taught and cultivated students, and eventually a very large garden.

People left the city when the factory began to fail. Incomes went down, and unemployment and crime sky-rocketed, making my hometown the murder capital of America. My wife, children, and I moved away—three hours away. Crime had become so bad my dad was beaten over the head with a Coke bottle one morning while walking to work. Another time, he was shot at (not hit, though) and beaten in his office by a drug seeker. The beatings accelerated his descent into dementia.

At first it was little things. Forgetting where he put his medical bag, forgetting to take the keys out of the car's ignition. Then it became more critical. He'd take patient charts into the exam room and forget drug allergies and write prescriptions for drugs that would harm patients. His patients or nurse would catch the errors and Dad would commend everyone for catching the error. "I'm just testing you to see that you're paying attention," he'd say, clapping the patient or nurse on the back and thanking them for their careful attention and keen eyes. Eventually, he would go for long walks and forget where he was and who he was. More than a few times, the local police would be called by my mom or by the person who found him, and he would be returned home.

As the oldest son, I had to tell him it was time to close his practice. I had to tell him and my mom they needed to leave the city and move three hours away where my family and I could look after them better. It wasn't long when I realized my dad couldn't drive anymore. He had completely forgotten the rules of the road. In fact, the last time he drove, he had completely forgotten that he needed to stay on the road. He and my mom went on vacation, and when they returned, I had sold his car. He never noticed and never asked.

Eventually, my dad had one stroke, then another stroke shortly after. He went into a nursing home. The strokes and the probable traumatic brain injuries from his beatings and mugging turned him into someone who only recognized my wife and sister-in-law. Every now and then, he might know one of my kids, but he quit knowing anyone else, and he had become belligerent and combative. Eventually, the staff in the nursing home had to strap him into his bed. My mom who never cried, who always maintained a sweet but forceful bravado, cried. It was the first time I'd ever seen her cry, and it was the first time I knew it was okay to show what I was feeling. We all let go of the stony stoicism. I held her, and I cried, too.

My dad's mind had been stolen by time. There was no other thief than time. Years later, my mom died. Her mental status was completely intact until the very end. Every one of us kids was so grateful her essence hadn't been robbed by time. Life went on, though. In my fifties, some of my friends from high school and college died—cancer was a biggie. There were heart attacks, too, but cancer was the uber-killer.

One friend died from Lou Gehrig's, and that was some terrible stuff to watch. He couldn't eat, couldn't talk, but he could smile, and he tried to communicate with facial expressions. Eventually, though, his main expression was a smile, and the sadness behind his eyes ate away at all of us—his friends, family, everyone. His oldest boy was at home the night he passed, giving him CPR until the ambulance arrived. But it was a blessing that he went the way he did. It was during the last quarter of the last game in the NCAA basketball finals, and his team had won the Big Dance.

2

My older sister, brilliant, very serious, sober, stoic, like our mother stopped eating regularly. She forgot she needed to eat. She did, however, find candy to be the main food group missing from her diet, and she sent my brother-in-law to the store multiple times weekly to buy more candy. Her kids worried her teeth were going to rot, especially since my sister had completely forgotten about oral hygiene. My brother-in-law cooked some, but he couldn't talk my sister into eating food that wasn't candy.

They were in their late 70s when they moved into assisted living. My sister was happy with the setup. She and my brother-in-law were roommates. Someone cooked and cleaned. My niece took them for their doctor appointments. My sister's one complaint was there never seemed to be enough candy. As happy as my sister was, she had begun forgetting things. She didn't recognize all of her grandchildren. She'd ask the oldest, "Who's your friend?" any time either of the other female grandchildren would visit, and she had completely forgotten who the boys were. If they didn't look exactly like their baby pictures, she had no clue who they were. She recognized everyone else, though, and she was affable almost all the time.

My brother-in-law had a bad heart, and I think it broke before he died, knowing his wife of more than 50 years wasn't the same vibrant woman he'd married all those years ago. We told my sister only one time that he had died. She was in the moment, and she cried. The day after he died, she asked where he was, and we knew we couldn't keep breaking the news to her and putting her through the agony. Everyone would tell her he was at the store or an appointment, and she accepted the answers. My sister died two years after my brother-in-law, and like my dad's, her death had been a blessing. Time had been a thief again.

3

I read. A lot. Fiction. Non-fiction. History, biographies. I was on the library board a few times. The library had been a Carnegie library. I could always tell a Carnegie library as soon as I saw one. Some of the old libraries had become restaurants, private homes, office buildings, or gift shops. Our town, though, had outgrown the old Carnegie library, and it wasn't compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Even though the building was grandfathered, it seemed silly not to be able to make the library accessible to anyone who would want to borrow a book. When the decision was made to build a new library, I was on the library board, and watching the process, making decisions, have a stake in the new building—it wasn't unlike the anticipation I'd felt when my wife was expecting our kids.

The groundbreaking was something else. Fanfare, photos, family, friends. It was an event, and I was part of it. Everyone on the board received a commemorative shovel with the date engraved on the spade. The newspaper photographer took our photo when the library director and all of us on the board plunged our shovels into the ground. We were on the front page. My shovel is still in the garage, I think.

My mom kept her mind sharp by doing the crosswords every day. She timed herself. She also kept lists. As soon as she thought of something she needed to do, she wrote it in her purse calendar. She never forgot a thing. If I kept my brain in good working order, maybe I wouldn't wind up like my dad and sister. Losing my executive function? No. I would not have it. As long as I could read and comprehend, I'd be all right.

I was never good with names and faces. My wife had always become irritated when I couldn't remember the name of someone I'd met once five years earlier. Her irritation grew, though, when I couldn't recall people who I'd met multiple times recently. I didn't worry, though. The people who I'd forgotten weren't part of our everyday existence, and she'd get over her frustration. She always did.

Meticulous recordkeeping. I never lost a piece of paper. If there was an important document to be had, I knew exactly where it was. I had my files. When January hit every year, when the W-2s and 1099s arrived, I was right there for it. I kept a stash of manilla folders behind my dresser, and as soon as the first tax documents arrived, I carefully dated the folder with the tax year and placed the document inside. My wife went through a phase where she loved wicker. We had a wicker file cabinet. Everything was filed in the wicker file cabinet. Our tax returns were in the file cabinet, and everything we would need for our tax returns was located there, too. Every last thing. According to my daughter, when I turned 85, that may have been the last year that I kept good records. I'm 86 now, and my daughter said she only found two of the 1099s. She had to call some places and put me on the phone to vouch for her so that she could get duplicate 1099s.

We never found the 1099s she had to call about—it was probably due to computers or something. Our society has become so dependent on machines. There was a time when a human put a 1099 or W-2 into a typewriter and actually typed the forms before they were mailed. Now machines did it all. We were the soylent green for the machines. It was a fear, and it was legitimate. People were training machines to think like people, and the machines were built to learn. They could never learn compassion, though, could they?

But I lost all the other 1099s, I guess. I don't know. I found I was surrounded by loose paper, and the 1099s could have been anywhere. They had to be here somewhere. And then there were the bank accounts. I had four, and I paid the bills. I paid certain bills from certain accounts. There was no rhyme or reason for why I paid the bills from the different accounts. I think I liked the idea of having more data sources to track. Of course, I wasn't tracking anything. At some point, I think it didn't really matter. I wrote the checks and put them into envelopes and wrote the due dates on the envelopes as prompts for putting things in the mail. Eventually, I though, quit knowing what day of the month it was, and I subsequently didn't put the checks in the mail. Sometimes, I paid the same bill twice. I kept finding a check in my wallet, and I couldn't remember if I was supposed to tear it up or cash it. Everyone in the family knew I had the check, but I could never remember what they told me to do with it.

Then there was the trust. I could never remember what was in the trust or why we had it, but I knew I wanted to sell some stock. My daughter is the trustee. She told me we could sell stock, but we'd have to buy some other stock and couldn't take money out of the trust. The stock was in the trust. "Why are you doing this to me?" I yelled into the phone. I made her cry. I hung up on her. Another day, she explained the trust to me. It made sense. Then after we got off the phone, it didn't make sense. I called her back. I made her cry. I hung up on her.

"I don't know why you're doing this to me," I said. "I worked and worked for all that money in the stock account. I don't understand why you won't let me have my money."

"Dad, you're the one who set this thing up. I'm just following the rules that you and your lawyer put into place. Do not yell at me for doing what your intended for me to do," my daughter said. I heard her getting ready to start crying. "I'm trying to make the money last as long as possible to take care of you and Mom, but I'm not breaking the rules or violating the provisions of the trust."

"Well, I'm going to call the lawyer and change the trust. I want to do something with the money."

"Okay, you do that. You call the lawyer and see what they say you can do," she said. She sounded tired, her voice breaking, defeated. I hung up on her. I knew she was crying.

4

My dad's remote memory was beautiful. Full of intricate detail, humor, vibrant. His recent memory was making me crazy. He didn't remember conversations we'd had even five minutes before. He called me all the time. Asked the same questions all the time. Some days he'd be happy when we got off the phone, and others he'd be so angry. It didn't matter if it was a good or bad day for him. I always cried because I knew time was a thief, fueling his frustration and anger.

His worst fear was my worst fear for him, me, my mom, my siblings. We didn't know who the thief would claim next when it was done with my dad. I asked him one day, "What do you hate most about getting old?"

"Not being able to do what I used to be able to do." He paused. "Losing my mind. I don't remember things." I cried, but he didn't hang up on me that time.