More steps downward. One of my father's few remaining tasks is to make me a turkey sandwich when I visit. It's a relatively simple process -- slice a roll, put a couple of slices of turkey into it. But it gives him a lot of pleasure. He wants to feel that he's still contributing, and looking after other people, and to the extent he feels that way, maybe he is. So I try to encourage him.
A week ago Saturday he gave me the sandwich, then told me that when he'd gone to make it the night before (he gives himself a lot of lead time), he'd forgotten how to do it. It wasn't 'til he woke up Saturday morning that he remembered.
So that's the first failure of... ah... I think the neurologists call it "procedural memory." If so, another threshold. You could argue that his inability to write checks counts, too -- I still let him sign the checks but I have to help him spell his name and find the right place for the signature line, and the math is completely beyond him now. But the sandwich is a straightforward physical project, and when he forgets how to do it, that feels different.
Planning for the sandwich is also becoming a problem. Typically he plans his grocery shopping several days in advance -- if I'm visiting on Friday, he'll shop on Wednesday, and start talking about it the previous Sunday or Monday. Unfortunately, in the past week or so he's lost his ability to navigate the geography of the days of the week. On Sunday I told him I'd be traveling on Tuesday and Wednesday. Starting on Monday, he'd ask me each night if gotten back from the trip. He said he was convinced I'd already gone because I hadn't called for several days -- "several days" being his take on the interval between Sunday night and Monday night. Last night I called him from the airport and he told me that since the trip had been tiring, I really ought to rest at home for several days -- and that he was looking forward to seeing me on Friday.
So every day we lose a little ground. Tomorrow I'll get on the train and go up to New York and see what sort of island he's standing on.
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