All a memory

I don’t know much about how things get here or where they came from. Let me back up a second. I am writing a book about memory, both my long gone mothers last few years as she lost a battle to Alzheimers and my own fantastic little battle with a Traumatic Brain Injury that sometimes has led to the most hilarious experiences with an almost complete lack of any short term memory.

That said, sometimes things are just outright confusing, like this morning. I was standing in my kitchen preparing to make some coffee, which is part of my daily routine. The bean grinder made all the same noises it has always made and when I checked, there were no ground coffee beans to add to the drip machine, which was not so surprising, because for as long as I could remember, this particular grinder has been a part of my life, which got me thinking, how long has that actually been the case and where did it come from?

See, the real joy and frustration of no memory are moments just like that one, the inability to know much about anything that has a role in my life. I was alone in the kitchen trying to figure out how to grind coffee beans by hand when I started to wonder where that particular grinder may have come from and it dawned on me how little I knew about my own life.

The grinder had died, that much was clear, another object to be replaced, but where did it come from and when? I would never know, so I used a food processor to adequately grind some coffee beans and that too left me wondering. See, I hardly ever use a food processor for anything and for the life of me I could never imagine having used it to grind coffee beans. Then I got to thinking, where did the food processor come from and when did it become a part of my life? It’s not like I ever wanted one.

For many people not knowing what happened recently would be something of a godsend and I would imagine, if I gave it much thought, that would be the case for me too, but sometimes it’s just flat out disturbing. I have been doing a lot of “editing” of late, getting rid of clothes and cameras, books and bedding that I never used or never would use again, just bringing boxes and bags of stuff to my local Goodwill. In some ways it’s kind of nice to just get ride of “stuff” but in other ways, it is remarkable acknowledging how much of these things have no resonant value in my memory. I have no clue where any of them came from and why they are in my closets, bathrooms or kitchen. It’s as if I have been asked to clean the house of someone I kind of know.