My Mother's Memory Loss, and Mine

"My cat, Harriet, is curled up on the TV console when I walk into the living room. She blinks at me, slowly. Cats blinking at you is supposed to be a sign of affection. I blink back. "Look at you on the . . ." I trail off. What is she sitting on? A cabinet? A shelf? It takes me about five seconds to remember the word. "Console," I finally say."

"This has been going on for a couple of years. And I'm forgetting not just words but simple tasks. Sometimes I forget to lock my car. Sometimes I leave my keys in the front door. In the summer of 2023, I forgot my toiletry bag in an airport hotel in Rome. During that same trip to Europe, I left a vibrator in a Paris hotel and had to ask a friend to retrieve it for me. (It was a very good vibrator and she is a very good friend.)"

"My mother lost her mind, about ten years ago, and I worry that mine is going, too. My mother never took great care of herself, so I wasn't exactly surprised when, in her early seventies, she suffered a series of mini strokes. After that, her cognitive abilities started to slip. At first, it was just an absent-mindedness that I chalked up to age rather than impairment. No one was that concerned. My mother still read a lot, for one thing: thick, dense books about American history, race, gender, and religion. She wasn't getting locked out of the house or letting bills pile up. She could write and mail a check, all in her impeccable cursive handwriting."

Persistent midlife episodes of forgetting words and simple tasks are described, including momentary word-finding pauses and leaving items behind during travel. The lapses include forgetting to lock a car, leaving keys in a door, and misplacing toiletries and personal items at hotels. A family history of cognitive decline is present: the narrator's mother suffered mini strokes in her early seventies and later exhibited worsening recent-memory problems and medication lapses despite continued reading and intact handwriting. Concerns arise about whether hormonal changes like menopause, stress, or the onset of neurodegenerative disease explain the memory difficulties and the resulting fear and embarrassment.

Read at The New Yorker