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When short-term memory fails: A conversation with my mom
Navigating the first stages of a memory problem is never easy.
Post COVID-19 vaccination, I drove down to visit my also-vaccinated family in Delaware this past weekend. It was the first time I had made this trip in over 14 months.
Prior to the pandemic, I would visit about every other month. This is something I started doing when my dad’s health and well-being started to go downhill faster due to his long-running stalemate with Parkinson’s disease. He passed away in 2018.
Now the trips are made to spend more time not only with my brothers and their families, but most of all with my aging mom, who will turn 84 later this year.
My mom and I haven’t always been close. As a young adult, I carried some resentment toward my parents because I felt they had been stifling to me as a teenager. My social freedoms, in my mind, were somewhat limited by earlier-than-my-friends’ curfews and holding a very old-fashioned mindset about dating in high school.
But in my 30s, I began to rebuild those relationships with my parents. I was most successful with my mom. My wife and I enjoy traveling and thought it would be fun to help fulfill some of my mom’s lifetime travel wishes. We went on an amazing Alaskan cruise one year…
