So much Kake

 Oh my farting gopher. Last week I had such a Kake day.  Will would have prevented me from having that day because he watched out for me.  He was my working memory until he lost his.

So, anyway, I thought I'd lost my black fake fur coat, my "widow's coat." I thought I'd left it at church.  Then I thought I'd left it when I was out running errands.  

"Now where did I stop into a store and use the restroom?" I asked myself. I drove to two places I'd been and called three others.  "Do you have a black coat in your lost and found?" I imagined that it might have been stolen out of my car.  I spent a couple of hours searching searching searching around town.

In the house I looked more and more frantically at all the places I normally put clothes. I could remember hanging the coat on a hook but it wasn't on the hall hook, the bathroom hooks, or in any of the closets.

Finally, I resigned myself to having lost my fake fur and went to the basement to take out my REAL ankle length Ozzie possum coat (after spending an hour or two thinking about buying a new fake fur coat). I hung it up outside for a day to get some of the storage scent out of it then brought it in.  Sadly, it doesn't fully close so not of great use in real cold.

So just as I was finally resigned to having lost the beautiful black coat that I purchased at White House/Black Market the day after Will died, I walked past it in the kitchen.

What?!?

Yup.  I'd hung it up on the apron hook in the kitchen.

 

"Thank you God, thank you God, thank you for the delivery of my black coat!"

This was so much Kake.

If pre-dementia Will were alive he would have saved me from two days of worry about this fucking coat. Anytime I left the house when he was there, he would check that I had everything.  On work mornings when I was on my own it would take me, as it often does now, at least three exits and returns from the house before I could get on the road. If well-Will were still alive, he would have quizzed me about where I'd been last and would have walked around and spotted the coat within the hour.  My mother, Will, and various admin assistants know that I can look right at something I'm searching for and not see it.  

Will was my memory for many things. That's been one aspect of my widow's anxiety.  How do I move through the world with this crap memory without my exterior brain?  

Well, just not worry about it is the best idea.  I have plenty of practices to help me seem competent -- I learned in my thirties to put certain things in the same place all the time (keys, wallet). I sometimes write down the names of people I meet, if I might meet them again. But even then ... where did I put down the list of names?

I wonder if I'll notice if I get dementia?  I will, because there are other measures besides not having a very good memory that are aspects of dementia. At least I hope I will.

In the meantime, I'll own that I'm a ditzy broad and just accept that aspect of myself.