As I get older, ... what was I saying?

A few years ago, as the family dog, Congo, was struggling through his enlarged heart and it was increasingly clear that sooner or later the decision had to made to put him down, the vet said something that made a whole lot of sense then, and all the more with every passing day: "getting old is not for sissies" ...

I have always worried about losing my memory.  Way back, when my clock had flipped over from a "2" to a "3" in the leading digit of the double-digit age, I expressed to a friend my worries about Alzheimer's.  He said I had nothing to worry about that one.  "The beauty of that disease is that you will be somebody else's problem" was his humorous way to help me think about it.

Here is to hoping that I have some ways to go before I start forgetting, and ...

Forgetfulness

Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go


followed obediently by the title, the plot,


the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel


which suddenly becomes one you have never read, 


never even heard of,


as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor


decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,


to a little fishing village where there are no phones.



Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye


and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,


and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,


something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,


the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.



Whatever it is you are struggling to remember


it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,


not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.



It has floated away down a dark mythological river


whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,


well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those 


who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.


No wonder you rise in the middle of the night


to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.


No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted


out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.