My Inner Critic

“When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.” ~Isak Dinesen

Inertia: the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion. Oh how my inner critic works to keep me in a state of inertia when it comes to writing. I'll work on that book/novella, a blog entry even, and my inner critic starts working it over in my mind, saying, "Crap! This is just crap!" 

Someone said writers like to have written; they don't like to write. They'll find any excuse not to face the awful white page that is waiting to be filled. Excuses abound. Having spent the better part of my undergrad and grad school years lamenting the writing process, even though I can't NOT write, I find myself at the other end of both, still lamenting my habit to rewrite as I write and to be over-critical in the process. I write a little. Then I read, re-read, then edit, edit, edit, then write some more, re-read, edit, write....ad nauseam, until I can't stand to read it again. Then I'll send it off to the universe of unknown readers, just so that I can quit rewriting and editing and critiquing. 


My habit worked fairly well in school, working on those papers. At least, I managed to get good grades on any paper I wrote, but my habitual critiquing interrupts the creative process when telling a STORY. Rewriting in the process can be death to creative writing.
Get it written first, then go back and fine tune. Look for those grammar and spelling mistakes AFTER it is written. Find those places that don't work, have holes, need data, and flesh it out after, not during. I have read this repeatedly when reading about creative writing, BUT, how do I turn off the inner critic to get it written first? 

Apparently, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck all used alcohol excessively when writing. Did alcohol somehow get their creative juices flowing? A perusal of the top ten drunk American writers (see link below) listed only males. What does that say? Anything? It may just be the bias of the writer, but what about Gertrude Stein, Gwendolyn Brooks, Joyce Carol Oats? I have no idea if they used alcohol excessively, let alone when writing. Is the writer saying women don't drink excessively when writing? True or not, it's beside the point. I'm not sure I want to use it as a means to an end, to overcome my inner critic. Curiously, a professor once did recommend it. Nevertheless, the thought of becoming a raging alcoholic just to be a better writer does not appeal. Oh, my mind leans toward exaggeration doesn't it. 


Other writers have mentioned free-writing as a means to get the creative juices flowing. Just write something. Write whatever comes to mind. Doesn't matter what it is. Don't stop to try to create, just write. Someone, can't remember who, said they would free-write for 10-30 minutes before getting started on whatever current project occupied their thoughts. That sounds like sounder advice then getting drunk, although, a little wine wouldn't hurt...still trying to justify a little wine to get the juices flowing. 


Truthfully, this blog serves a purpose along these lines. It's a place I can come and babble, give myself permission to use sentence fragments, not worry too much about the use of contractions, and if I mess up a little grammar now and then, so be it. I do come back and revisit, find mistakes, or add thoughts, but as I say in the heading, it's a work in progress. 

To be sure, my inner voice keeps shouting resist, resist, resist, the temptation to be critical IN THE PROCESS. Let the process flow. Once  I overcome inertia, momentum will carry me. Then I can let the critic in me mercilessly do her work. Writing down the story as it comes to mind, as Denison remarks in the quote above, a little at a time, everyday a little, before I know it, the story will be written. Here's to writing it down...
What about you? Any writers out there? How do YOU overcome your inner critic? 

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The Choices We Make As Women

The women of my life occupy my thoughts these days, for obvious reasons. Mom lives with me because of memory issues (Vascular dementia and Alzheimer's) and my days are filled with laughter, sadness, aggravation, but also observation and reflection. She fills my life now and I'm recognizing among many things, how her prejudices about "women" in general have filtered into and shaped my life. 

Mom believes women should stay home, take care of their families and that men should be the breadwinners. She laments whenever the subject of women and work comes up, "This country started to deteriorate when women left their duties and went out into the work force." Unfortunately, inwardly, for years, I harbored a similar prejudice toward women with children who worked outside the home. It wasn't overt, or in your face, just a slight superiority, actually born of my own insecurities. 


Now, mind you, Mom started to work outside the home when I was about 12-years-old. It was not a career choice, but rather a reluctant choice based on perceived economic necessity. My parents divorced when I was 21. I know she partially blames herself that working outside the home somehow ruined her marriage, and negatively affected her children's lives. I saw my Mom work hard to provide a roof over our heads and put food on the table after the divorce. Coupled with the choices her children were making, life was not easy for her. I didn't blame her for the divorce, but I secretly felt life would had been better had she been home.


Once I had my own child, I wanted to stay home, even though I was single. In my twenties, in Omaha, Nebraska, I worked part-time at a doctor's office. My sister took good care of Charlie, but I missed him. I wanted to be the Mama. Of course, women who work outside the home are still the mama to their children, but it was my own emotional need to be "with" my child that was the bottom line that kept influencing the choices I made, along with, at the time, that unrecognized general prejudice about women and work. 


Having had enough of Omaha, and seeking a new and possibly better life for her children, my Mom decided to move to California to be near her sister and family. Despite my fears, California, after all was a dark, heathen place, and after struggling with my desire to be more independent (I was still living with Mom), we moved along with four of my siblings in 1973. 


There, I cleaned houses and a doctor's office; I also lived on welfare. I told people I cleaned toilets for a living. The money I earned had to be reported to the state, and was deducted from my next month's subsistence check. I didn't live high-on-the-hog as some people think about welfare recipients. I had to save money from my checks for the next month, and usually carried only a dime in my pocket after rent, utilities and food. I couldn't get ahead to get off the dole. I wanted desperately to get off of welfare, and desperately to be at home. I remember a friend told me, "Well, that's why God gives us husbands." Her implication being, husbands are there to take care of us so we don't have to work outside the home, or be on welfare. I didn't have one, husband that is. 


Nevertheless, those odd cleaning jobs allowed me to take my son with me to work. It was honest work. I rode a bike with Charlie on the back to each job; picture Rerun, of the Charlie Brown cartoon features on the back of his mom's bike. I'd sing to try to keep him awake (Sing, Charlie, Sing), because if he fell asleep, it would jerk my bike. In traffic, not a good idea. http://youtu.be/AlWI2JJ8l4Y


I hated standing in line to receive a welfare check and getting off the public dole was a major reason I moved to Tennessee in the mid 1970s.


An opportunity presented itself for me to live in a house in Farmer's Exchange and possibly care for an elderly couple for room and board, plus a small salary. If they liked me, if they decided to come home from the nursing home, and the family agreed, I would be their live-in caregiver. I could be a "work from home" mom. It felt like an answer to prayer. What would I have done if they decided not to come home or if they didn't like me? I had no clue and no back-up plan. After three years in Sunnyvale, on the San Francisco Peninsula, with $200 in my pocket and a 5-year-old in tow, I left California for the hills of Middle Tennessee. The average age of the residents in Farmer's Exchange was 80 years old. I imagined raising my child alone among them hills. 


Miss Annie and Mr. Lloyd did come home; I did take care of them. After two years I met Joe, their grandson and we were married. That's the short version. Our marriage was blessed with two children, Jennifer and David, and I spent the next twenty-four years being an at-home mom, as we lived in rural Tennessee, with a few breaks living in Kuwait and Cyprus. That "at-home" job description included teaching them at home. Joe worked overseas in the oil-field and was gone at least six months out of the year. We both felt my being at home was beneficial as I provided stability and continuity to our family life. Of course, he is very, ah, hum, how should I say it, traditional? He believes the man should bring home the bacon and the women should fry it. We clicked along those lines when the children were growing up.


That's another story for another day, but as you see, I kept making decisions, and was able to make choices that allowed me to be in the home. Even though it was hard living in Tennessee those first few years and then when I married (I don't know what made me think getting married to an oil-field worker would ease my loneliness as I often lamented Joe's absences), it all allowed me to follow my own inclinations. I had the opportunity to make the choices I made because of family and then friends. I wouldn't trade those years for anything in the world. Other mothers don't have the opportunity and/or the inclination.


My Mom's negative attitude about women and work, I now recognize, did filter into my decisions on some subconscious level to please. Distance helped me over the years, to recognize how much I wanted to please my Mom, and certainly, now that the tables are turned and she lives with me, I deal with that every day. To please her is just not possible any more, if it ever was.


Looking back, and considering my prejudices, I know that for most of my life, I'd rather listen to a male preacher then a female one. Until recently, I'd rather go to a male doctor then a female one, but I'm changing. I guess you'd call me a late feminist bloomer, or possibly a convert. Oh, how parents' attitudes can trickle down to their children. I listen to Mom now, carry on about women and work, and I argue with her on behalf of women having the right to decide whether or not to work away from home without being made to feel like they are somehow shirking their duties. 

I remind her others don't have the luxury of staying home, either because they are raising a family on their own, or because economic times are tough. There just isn't any other way. We have gone around and around talking about shared duties, not based on gender, and the fact that men can be nurturing as well as women. If Mr. Mom chooses to stay home, while his partner works, that's their choice. Nurturing is not gender specific. 


It's pointless to argue, I know, I keep saying that to myself. But I find myself reacting, seething, and arguing just the same, which is strange, since my lifestyle agrees with her. I'm still making the choice to work from home as a caregiver and writer even though over the past eight years I've acquired those missing marketable skills. If there was ever any doubt in my mind, that the only reason I wasn't seeking a career outside the home was because I couldn't do anything else, it's gone.


I do believe our choices should not be based on gender stereotypes. I believe that, because I have a daughter. If my sons can take advantage of opportunities, she should be able to as well. Though I made my choices along traditional lines, well, for the most part, I'd argue from the depths of who I am, that she should have the opportunity to pursue whatever path she is inclined to choose, especially as a human being with free will. 


My daughter has had more opportunities then I had, more then my mother had, and certainly more then my grandmothers had. As I think of my grandmothers' influence on my life, particularly the circumstances that were thrust upon them and out of them the choices they made, well, that will have to wait for another blog. 
To be continued....

Walking Barefoot in the Grass

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=149

Life as a kid was simple. Maybe it just seemed simple in hind-sight, but really, what did we have to worry about except the atomic bomb in the 1950s? Summer's were spent riding bikes to the corner grocery store to buy penny candy, playing kick-the-can in the alley with the neighbor kids until the street lights came on, playing hop-scotch, flying kites, catching fireflies, hanging upside down on the jungle gym, and sitting in the grass picking dandelions with one or two of my six siblings.

Lying on the grass, looking at billowy clouds as they changed shapes drifting high above us, suggested, even represented, change. Life itself can seem as nebulous.

I can't bring back those years. They are gone. I can't even recreate them. The closest I get to the ground is walking around in my bare feet watering the lawn, or sitting outside on my lawn chair with my bare feet on the ground, soaking up those free electrons the earth gives us. Hop-scotch, forget it. To lay on the grass would be a major effort, not so much getting down there, but getting back up would be a chore (although, I might just try it, when no one is looking and I have a back-up I can call). Siblings all have their own families and we no longer live in the same household, although, we have mentioned that when we get older, older then we are now, we should buy a big house together and live in it. I'm not sure that would work very well, it would have to be a BIG house. I can see the seven of us playing bumper cars with our scooter chairs on the lawn, saying, as we run into one another, "Who the Hell are you!" Life has sure changed since those days of dandelion picking. 

It's always changing, taking on new shapes, with new possibilities. My life has changed many times since those days. I've lived several different kinds of lives, and yet, I'm still me, just more so (and I'll leave it to your imagination what that means). Now is different too. To long for what was would keep me from finding new ways to live now, for instance seeking new groups to enjoy like-minded activities, or walking barefoot instead of lying on the grass.

Laughter is good

I should record my mother's laughter. I love it when she laughs. There are times when she is watching something particularly funny on television, or in a movie, and I'll hear her laugh and laugh. Today was a good day. Mom went to the beauty shop and liked her "do." We ate breakfast at Village Inn and talked and laughed about silly things. The waitresses and the manager know us and they greeted her, which makes her feel good. There are days when this is not the way of things, but today was a good day. Then I asked her if she wanted to go for a ride, half holding my breath. I reminded her she didn't have to, just if she wanted to, hoping to stop any wild thoughts from creeping in. It was Trader Joe's day; we needed some fresh organic fruits and vegetables and the ride was fun. We chatted like magpies and laughed and laughed. I think the laughter was all the sweeter because it had been such a rotten week for us both, though she doesn't remember the details. It just felt good. I didn't want it to stop, so I came home and after putting everything away, watched a funny movie and laughed some more.

Laughter is such good medicine, it's true.

It seems the days when it is most difficult, those are the days that I tend to write. Writing helps me work through my thoughts, my emotions, they put everything in perspective. It's my way of thinking out loud. It's therapy. Usually, a picture sits there, waiting for my thoughts to catch up to what's going on inside. My brothers and sisters get the rough draft in a HELP! email. Then I wake up in the middle of the night with my thoughts spilling out onto my keyboard. Sharing our journey makes me feel vulnerable for myself and for mom though. Sometimes, I'll dream about it. You know that dream where you walk into the room and you're half-naked?  Shudder.

Yes, Laughter is good. Has laughter helped you on this journey you are on taking care of loved ones or parents? Do you find ways to incorporate humor into your day, if it's hard to find anything humorous in your circumstances? Maybe something you do might help another, share. :)

Driving Ms Nancy

Nancy (18 yrs)  before leaving CA in 1941

Mama misses her car. Not this one, her last one. She endlessly laments "letting it go," although there was no question, with her Alzheimer's, she had to stop driving. So that job falls to me. I get such a kick out of the movie Driving Miss Daisy, that I tell Mama all the time, "You're a doodle, Mama."

One of the stories Mama repeats endlessly, if I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand and one times, is about where she was when Pearl Harbor was bombed. She was living in California with her widowed mother and her sister's family. They spent two years there after her dad died in 1939. Fear of air strikes caused her family to return to Nebraska in 1941, a seven-day trip at 35 miles-per-hour over two-lane highways. This is one of many regrets that get rehashed in her mind and retold as if she were telling it for the first time. Having to leave California and the endless ride back to Nebraska.

Mama loves to ride, or at least she did. Since Mama moved in with me over two years ago, we've taken rides to help with the agitation that builds over perceived threats to her well-being. Long rides calmed her, much like taking a colicky child on a ride before bedtime will sometimes help them fall asleep. The rolling hills and fields of Nebraska, playing music on the oldies radio channel, allowed her to reminisce and enjoy a sunny day, when otherwise, she'd be sitting watching old movies (although, the old movies are a help too, especially those Rodger's and Hammerstein, or Lerner and Lowe musical favorites).

But lately, not always, but sometimes, and I can never predict when, she gets agitated when we go away from home. Fear of being displaced, of being carted off to some facility somewhere, even though I've assured her again and again that there are no plans to do that, that I love her and want her to be here with me, has her repeatedly saying, "You can't fool me, I'm not stupid. I know what you are up to and I don't deserve to be treated this way." She is worried I've taken her for a ride so that someone can come in and move all her things. She's afraid she'll arrive home and find her furniture has been carted off somewhere, I'm not sure where. She warns me, "All hell is going to break loose." Reassurance doesn't help, she knows what she knows. The fact that every time this happens and we arrive home with nothing changed is lost to her, because each time is new, having never happened before, because she doesn't remember.

Mama has always been perceptive, she knows something is wrong, she is just not connecting the dots, or rather, she connects them much as our thoughts do in dreams, all mish-mashed together in some strange pattern that bares a resemblance to reality, but is just not reality. It's HER reality. Dreams, perceptions, hallucinations, traces of comments, people, places, all get mixed up as she tries to make sense of her thoughts. She refuses to accept that she has a memory problem (I'm the one that needs to admit I don't remember things, right?), so I don't even try to change her perceptions any more. It's too frustrating for me and for her.

As a result, Driving Ms Nancy is not always as pleasant as it used to be, for her or for me. It's one more area of Mama's life that is closing in on her. It's one more area that is causing grief, one more area we may have to let go. Last evening, I drove Ms Nancy into Iowa, across the bridge, to buy a CD of gospel favorites that I played for her in the morning (she wanted her own copy to play on her DVD player...I would have let her use mine, it was an excuse to ride :)). I guess I'll have to forget those days it doesn't work (like Thursday) and be thankful for the days it does (like Friday). What a difference a day makes. Letting go is never easy, though with acceptance, hopefully, there will be peace...or not.

My Soul has a Purpose

"I have a cause. We need those don't we? Otherwise the darkness and the cold gets in and everything starts to ache. My soul has a purpose, it is to love; if I do not fulfill my heart's vocation, I suffer." ~ St Thomas Aquinas

There are times when words jump off a page and either speak to or reflect unspoken, even unconscious, thoughts. There are times when people, either in person or through books, enter into my life at just the right bend in the road, and my whole being resonates with most, if not all of their words, journey, soul. They are teachers, sent to me, I believe, by God at the moment when I need to hear what they have to say.

Maybe it is in order to elicit change. Maybe it is to encourage me in a path I have taken. Maybe it is to offer me hope. I'm finding all of the above as I read Quantum Wellness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide to Health and Happiness, by Kathy Freston.http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Wellness-Practical-Health-Happiness/dp/1602860777/ref=pd_sim_b_8

I saw Kathy on Oprah recently, talking about the Quantum Wellness 21 day cleanse. I've been seeking to cleanse my body of various irritants for over a year now (toxins, gluten, soy, eggs, dairy, diet drinks etc), as I search for those foods and habits that have produced inflammation in my body creating a "hot" bed (excuse the pun) for un-wellness, or dis-ease.

The journey toward wholeness has been longer than that, a lifetime, but it intensified over the past ten years. I've made changes in a effort to lessen stress levels and reduce that which produces physical and emotional pain (see earlier blogs) with a goal toward being all that I can be at this stage of my life. St Francis says holiness (wholeness) is becoming the best version of yourself. Quantum Wellness is one of those books I wish I had bought in paperback instead of on my Kindle, because it would be easier to re-read, flipping through to favorite pages. (I'll admit to dog-earing, underlining, post-it notes when I'm reading intently and I'm afraid this book would have a multitude of them, irritating my brother Bob to no end.)

It's not that the information is totally new to me. My habit has been when I'm interested in a subject, I immerse myself in reading matter until I'm saturated, so I'm not finding a lot of material that is unfamiliar to me. It's that Kathy melds physical and spiritual in a way that inspires me to continue in my quest for wholeness along several different fronts (which is what I've been doing, hence the resonating and hope).

For example, the current chapter, "Be the Change: Stepping up to the Life That is Calling You," begins with quotes by Gandhi, St Thomas Aquinas (see above), and Lao Tsu on being that change you'd like to see in the world. The Aquinas quote is the one that jumped off the page, affirming my present decision to stop teaching and be "at home" with mom (Alzheimer's), as I continue to explore the writer's life. Let me explain.

One of reasons (not THE reason) I moved back to Nebraska from Tennessee was to broaden my horizons and explore writing by going to school once the children reached that age, you know, don't need mom hovering. I love to learn. I love to read. Writing, sharing what I learn, is a natural fit. For reasons I won't elaborate on though, I felt I had to DO something with those diplomas I earned, i.e. earn a living with them, although, I have to laugh at the thought. Neither adjunct teaching nor chaplaincy offers a descent living wage. No one teaches for the money, nor do chaplains serve to get rich.

In exploring what to do, based on past experiences, I tried chaplaincy for a year. Half-way through my residency, I knew it was not a good fit and I wouldn't be working as a chaplain. Not that it wasted my time, I learned SO MUCH about myself in the course of the year. I taught for four years at the University level (as a GTA and as an adjunct), and I found that mostly, I felt out of my skin. Teaching at a University was not a good fit, not a bad one, just not it. Again, the time was not wasted. When we learn about ourselves, learn that something doesn't fit and are willing to change directions, it's all good. Both jobs increased my stress and pain levels, creating an out-of-my-element feeling at a time when pushing myself beyond my limits was not good for my body or my soul. There is a time for pushing, but I needed healing. That's what I learned. I still need healing, emotionally, physically, spiritually. Writing feeds my soul and aids the process.

Once I decided to stay home and seek to write, a weight lifted. I eased into being here for mom, despite the challenges. It all felt like a natural fit for me, even though it is far from easy and I still suffer from various habits that hinder me from writing as much as I would like.

Getting back to the chapter in Kathy's book, what is my cause? I desire a world where we can live together despite our differences. I desire a world that is loving, compassionate, forgiving, kind, gentle, merciful, not judgmental. I don't enjoy political and religious wrangling; a good argument leaves me exhausted, not stimulated so I don't want to engage in changing the world through arguments. I do believe in absolutes, but I am not the judge, so I would rather pray for mercy than condemn, seek to love rather than discriminate.

Being centered, at home, allows me the opportunity to seek for ways to share my thoughts and what I learn through writing, and I am grateful. Writing, sharing, caring for Mom, is giving me, on a personal, manageable, micro level, the opportunity to practice being the change I would like to see on a macro level in the world around me.

I'm not there yet.  I'm not whole, I wish I were, but I'm getting there, one change at a time.

The Winter of Life

2011 (C) Shelly Stotts Photography, used by permission

Loss seems to permeate my reflections during these winter months. As the ground lay frozen and frost and snow clings to the trees, I cling to this time I have with Mom, despite its frustrations, knowing that someday our time together will end, and I'll experience a finality to this loss we are inhabiting.

Obviously, Alzheimer's is associated with "loss" as slowly loss creeps in, but it's not just the inability to recognize people (although that may happen eventually, if mom lives long enough). I noticed that's a typical response from relatives who infrequently visit. They are surprised and pleased that she recognizes them,  as if that is the only loss of memory we might be experiencing as a family. Loss of memory incorporates so many facets of our lives.

For instance, Mom loses things, because she can't remember what she did with them, nor can she remember what she was doing at the time she misplaced them to retrace her steps. That takes memory and reasoning, both of which elude her in these winter months of life. She loses not only tangible items (like her underwear, socks, glasses, sweater, the television remote), but also life events, and yet I'm fascinated by shifts that occur from one minute to the next and how the mind seeks to find itself.

Sometimes mom laughs over a lost item and asks me to help her find it because, "I put it somewhere and can't find it now." Perfectly reasonable, we all lose things and can't find them, it's just her days are sometimes filled with trying to find one item and then another. Other times, a shift occurs and frustration sets in. She can't admit to losing an item, and thinks someone, meaning me, must of moved it, or on those days when paranoia sets in, someone came in and took items that she REMEMBERS putting in her drawer, or taking out of the dryer, etc. She probably does remember doing it, just not THAT day. It's a memory from sometime in the past. Time collapses and events get mixed up in memory. She becomes agitated at the thought I might be trying to make her seem crazy because I won't admit someone has taken them. The last time this happened, I just bought her some new socks and underwear rather then argue someone didn't take them. When she received them, she, of course, had forgotten that it had recently been a major issue for her.

Events can be lost. "I don't remember whole sections of time when I lived in California, but I remember vividly my life on 28th Street when I was a child, why is that?" Those cherished events in her life, when her father was alive, seem frozen in memory, and are repeated endlessly with only slight variations. Its comforting for her to recall the same stories over and over as proof, she remembers.

Curiously, I've noticed lately, other memories are new, just not of events in which she actually participated. Mom can remember events clear as day that never happened, to her. She thinks that they are events that she lived, but in fact, they are memories of stories told to her by others, that she now incorporates in her mind as hers.

As an illustration, yesterday, she remembered someone and was recalling an association. She told me she spent two years with a young man and got to know him before his death. "He grew into a fine young man, really special." This never happened to her, but somewhere, deep within her mind, she remembers the story of his life and now, she has incorporated it into her life story. So surprisingly, at least for mom, the loss of memory includes a found section.

And then too, amazingly enough, there are times when automatic responses kick in and her mind doesn't really grope for information. Having worked in the medical field for decades, when my brother was recently hospitalized, mom talked to him on the phone and asked all the pertinent questions and responded to his answers meaningfully. But, once the conversation ended and time passed (it doesn't take long), she had trouble remembering why he was in the hospital and asked repeatedly, what was wrong, what were they doing, and she accused me of not telling her everything. Trips to the hospital helped, while we were there, but then afterwards, it all disappeared except for the uneasiness and agitation of knowing something was wrong. It was difficult for her to process it all, but the memory of the emotions when learning of his hospitalization remained.

I just finished reading, The House on Beartown Road, by Elizabeth Cohen. In it she recounts a winter she spent caring for her father (an Alzheimer's victim) and her infant daughter. All our experiences as children and/or caregivers of Alzheimer's sufferers are unique, but hers was particularly poignant as she cared for loved ones at the beginning of life and at the end and made associations between the two. As I came to the end of her memoir, and read about her father's condition at the time of publication, it reminded me (such a good word...to re-mind) of what may be in store for mom, for loved ones, or for me, in the winter years, but who knows.

I read predictions about the likelihood of baby-boomers suffering some form of dementia if we live long enough and I'd be lying if I said it didn't concern me. Watching mom lose things, events, people, in a weird sort of way, it's encouraging to know that the mind still seeks to find itself, and if it can't, it incorporates the memories of others as its own in order to comfort itself in loss.