Memory I did the memory test today. It’s hard to believe that tomorrow I may not know where I am nor what is the day. Others have passed this way, none to my knowledge in my family. Sorrow gnaws the red bone of my heart. The lady at the doctor’s counter says she is seventy. Her bed-ridden mother, for whom she seeks medicinal solace is ninety-eight. Her mind, she says, is as sharp as a needle or a knife, or a blade of grass. What dreams, I wonder, flit through her head at night? Does she recall her child hood with its pigtails, the first young man she kissed, church on Sundays, the genders carefully segregated, driving there in the family horse and cart? Thunder rolls and shakes my world’s foundations; a storm watch, followed by storm warnings, walks across my tv screen. Lightning flashes: memories, are they made of this? Test A test of memory and I scored 100%. I added and subtracted with ease, could tell the time, draw a clock face, copy a picture … I knew too well the day, the date, the building’s name, the city, the province I lived in … one hundred per cent! What if such distinctions should disappear: day and date become confused, blur into one another, no longer any sense of time or space or place, and everywhere a here and now, the city’s streets a labyrinth walked or driven by others, and me with no thread to guide. Fear runs chill fingers down my spine. Thank God I’m fine for the moment, my i’s dotted, my t’s crossed, my ducks in line … but for how much longer will the hand that arranges those ducks be mine?
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 00:10:45 +0000
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