It's almost what now?

So, y'all. It's almost March. 

I honestly don't know how I always forget that February is so short. Memory issues notwithstanding, I've always been surprised by February. As far as I can figure, on, I believe, April 2, I will have been working on this blog for a year.

April also marks the 4 year anniversary of my brain hemorrhage. That's pretty amazing, when I think about it. 

Since my concept of time is all messed up from that same event, the fact that it's been nearly 4 years seems pretty weird. I don't have much of a distance between getting home in September of 2019 and now. I realize how odd that seems. We're definitely a society governed by time. We set alarms to wake up. We measure ages of people, ages of relationships, ages of food, and the ages of ideas.

Einstein said time was relative, and he's right. I don't think we really understand how relative time is until we're adults. Then, as time is just flying by you, leaving nothing but a cloud of dusty memories, you remember how slowly everything went when you were a kid. It was just this endless waiting game; waiting for school to start, waiting to ride the bus, waiting for lunch, waiting to go home and so on, throughout your young life. 

Then you wait to graduate and go out on your own or to college, you wait to find the person you want to spend your life with, or at the very least the next year. Then you may wait to get married, wait to have or adopt kids and then...

Then everything speeds up. Suddenly the years just fly by. You have a baby and then one day you suddenly realize you have an actual child. Then that child becomes more and more independent, and then you have an empty nest. They move away and maybe get married and have kids of their own and you're left spinning, feeling like you're dodging cars on a super fast highway, never able to catch your breath before the next one comes and passes you by. 

That's how it seemed to me before, too. 

But now, well...

My eldest moved out of the house at 18, before I got home from the hospital and rehab. My youngest, now 12, is still with us at home, of course. He swears he doesn't want to move out ever, but I know that he eventually will. 

Speaking of my youngest, he was 8 when I had the hemorrhage. He was in 3rd grade, I think. That's what my quick computation came up with, anyway. I know that all parents say time flies, but with no solid concept of the time passing since then, I find it startling today. Looking at him and seeing him almost a full fledged teenager when it literally feels like he was only 9 six months ago. 

It's a real case of where did the time go. 

There are times that stand out in my memory, still, even with it being as messed up as it is. I have a clear memory of my eldest son taking me for a drive in his new-to-him Mustang convertible. It was in the summer. I have no concept of which year. I remember having a heart breaking phone call when my husband's grandmother died in late 2019, though I have no idea of the month in which it took place. I even vaguely remember a trip my husband took us on for our belated anniversary, which I think happened within a month of me coming home, but now that I think about it, I think I might have still been in rehab and went out on a weekend pass type of thing.

But I'm not sure. I'm not sure at all. 

Some things I only remember because someone told me about it. Some things I remember very clearly and they never took place. Some things I remember wrong, even.

This is, as far as I know, quite common, particularly with brain damage thrown into the mix. It's still unnerving, as I imagine you understand. 

In my former life, I was an in-home caregiver for the elderly. One of my clients, who had Alzheimer's, had a book she would periodically pull off the shelf to show people. It was called "Remember I Can't Remember," and dealt with how to talk to people with dementia. She would hold it out to you and say "Have you read this? This is a very good book."

She did this when she felt frustrated with her life. That was my interpretation of it, anyway. She was upset and just wanted people to know how to talk to her. 

I think about her, and that book, quite a bit. We have more in common than not, at this point. The concept of the book is something I try to let people know when I get frustrated with how life is, or how I'm interpreted. 

Saying "remember" to a person with memory issues is problematic. Memory is what helps someone remember, of course. If your memory is faulty, or completely broken, "remember" isn't going to make that better. Some people might call it triggering. To me it's just a sad word to hear, as I may remember and I may not. There is no specific how or why, it's not selective. It's just a fact: Roses are red, the sky is blue, fire is hot, my memory sucks. It just is. 

Grace is a huge concept in my life. I have to give it to myself, I have to give it to others, and I need to get it from most everyone I talk to. In this format, I can review what I've written, though I may have forgotten I wrote it at all, and see where I was going with a post. Even my blog is capable of affording me grace.

Losing access to parts of your brain is an ever-evolving process of questioning, understanding and forgiving yourself. All of us need support through this process. As we grow more comfortable with ourselves and our abilities, grace gets easier to afford, and life gets easier to live.