I have been very lazy in writing my blog. It has been ages since I felt able to put ‘pen to paper’. Is this what is known as a writer’s block? I cannot say. Maybe this is just lethargy on my part. Seems one of the symptoms that has now become distinct from all the others as pain levels have come down. It is a strange feeling as I am actually feeling physically ok but the mind is dull, unable to think, unable to find any will to move and raising feeling of guilt for being an inert lump of flesh!
Well today I decided I must put a few thoughts down. Having had a lot of time to reflect on past and what I want from the future I find that some memories have dimmed and vanished while some remain sharp as if they had just happened. I was thinking about the time when I had my accident. Some things like the impact of the other van, ringing my husband to tell him I was in an accident but ok. And that I had to go as the firemen and ambulance were here to get me out of the car! I distinctly remember the cold and wet for it took nearly an hour before I got going to the hospital. I was feeling light headed with the cold and low blood sugar… the shock and nothing but a sandwich all day will do that. I got annoyed at everyone asking if I was diabetic. I just wanted some sugar as I did not want to pass out. I do remember being breath analysed, my sister and brother-in-law coming to get me and my husband coming straight from work. We went on to get my things from the car (it had been towed to a garage). After that, I have a hazy memory to getting home, ringing my older sister and my mother to tell them I had an accident and that I was ok. But then memory blurs as there are glimpses of it…. pain, bruises, swollen face, sister coming with family to visit in the evening and sleeping. In fact this haziness appears to be for a good couple of months. I did have 2 weeks holiday booked so we went to Scotland. My mother in law was with us. I did drive right from the start but I cannot remember much of the driving except that I was constantly looking out for other cars to do strange things. There was always a panic about going to new places by myself after that. I realised that my attention would not be totally on the traffic if I was looking out for the road signs. Is this mind protecting by blurring out painful memories? A deliberate wiping out of painful experiences? But then does one need to remember everything that has happened?
Another aspect of life that has got misted in the fog of time is the past 4 years – ill health, grief for loss of family seem to have taken their toll here. This has made it harder to verbalise or even clearly reflect on a clearly painful time. There are distinct moments that stand out from the fog of pain. Work, when I could, did seem to allow some hold on sanity only to slip back when flat on back, alone and in pain. There is a definite sensory deprivation when you are partly asleep and staring at the ceiling with no sound or person about. So was it just the pain or the tedium of immobility that wiped out memories? The reflection needed putting into words for who knows if I will remember them later. Recently I have joined a group called UCTD (Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease) on facebook and found that there are others like me and this sense of relief that I am not alone was palpable for both my husband and I. It also brought home that this lethargy and playing up of memory are symptoms of the illness and so is the emotional ups and downs.
Sometimes I have conversations with my mother who due to age has poor memory particularly short term. She forgets what she has told me and often we have a conversation repeated, sometimes in the same call! For example she said ‘your aunty called to say hello and pass message that so and so had passed away.’ By the time we had gone through some other topic she forgot and told me the whole conversation again. Yesterday I asked her if she remembers what she did with the shopping trolley she had got the first time she went to UK. Now the reason for asking was I bought one yesterday so that we do not have to carry bags. It is a black one and while the one my mother had was distinctly with a red tartan front. I was telling my husband that my mother never used it to go buy veggies from the market as the place was usually muddy and that her lovely shopping trolley would get dirty. Not only my mother did not remember what happened to it but could not even remember what it looked like. The only part of the conversation she recognised was that yes she would not have taken it to the market for the fear of getting it dirty! Now I have become more tolerant of the elderly and their lapses of memory, in my life for I can feel empathy with them.
I do realise that examples of memory lapses have been of situations that were painful and so can take the stance that mind is protecting me but why does it happen with even happy moments in life. I have been on many holidays with my husband and with other family members. It seems after a passage of decade or two even the happy moments become indistinct from each other. I particularly find that names of places elude me but the memory of the emotions (the joy of being somewhere new) is quite sharp. This was never more sharp an awareness, as when I was filling forms for visa application for Australia. We had to go through passport stamps to work out when I had been and where. Some holidays seem not that long ago while others are nearly misted over completely. It was a big surprise to find the time that has actually lapsed. Once upon a time I used to write out daily diary of each day in every holiday. It was for my mother as I am terribly lazy writing letter. This way she would get a nice long letter at least once a year. Now I feel I should have kept copies and linked to photos. The technology is there now to do it…. but I seem to have run out of inclination to do anything about it. Should I scan all the photos and write short notes to show my journey through life? If so for what purpose? Is that a legacy someone would want? Or it would yet another bit of rubbish someone will have to dump? Now I am not so pessimistic but really who cares besides myself and maybe my husband about our memories? May be it is best to keep memories private and not develop this exhibitionist attitude to displaying every part of life for all to see. As time goes by I will take some of the memories out of that box in the brain and treasure them and also let them go into the sands of time.
