Tag: short term memory loss

Finding the Humor in Short Term Memory Loss

Mrshorttermmemory
Tom Hanks as Mr. Short Term Memory on Saturday Night Live

After I posted a story about my frustration in caring for my Mom who is a moderate to progressed phase of multi-infarct dementia, I got a comment from another blogger Demented Girl that made me giggle. In the past week, I’ve been thinking about a skit that Saturday Night Live used to do with Tom Hanks who was Mr. Short Term Memory. Here is a link to one of the skits where he is visiting his friend in the hospital. I ache for a comedy about this tragic disease. While it’s no laughing matter, I think the skit does a good job of reminding me how much I’ve improved my skills being patient as I’ve traveled this journey.

Some days I wonder if I’m too accepting of things I can’t change. I have a morning ritual of meditation where I will review my mental checklist of the things I want and how to get there. It has helped me become more focused as well as eliminate “worry” from my vocabulary. I find that worry doesn’t help me do better, it actually diminishes my abilities. I’ve been on a mission to completely read the bible in a year, and it’s part of my meditation. It’s helped me eliminate some harmful emotions – self-doubt, judgement and worry. Many of us on this path have shared that it’s changed us in positive ways. While some days it sure doesn’t feel that way, I know that it’s teaching me skills I failed to learn the first half of my life. Grown. 

The intro jiggle to the skit: “Mr Short Term Memory, he shouldn’t have stood under the pear tree, now there is just no remedy, he will frustrate you so, but he’ll never know, because he’s Mr. Short Term Memory.”

 

 

Your Nephew was Honored for Work at his School

While my sister was here, my son was confirmed in church. My sister picked up my parents that Sunday morning and brought them to the service.

In addition to a regular Sunday service (with the usual prayers, hymns and a sermon), there were three special items for the confirmands (the word used by the church to refer to the teenagers being confirmed). One was a video of a “rap” they performed about the Ten Commandments. My son was in it and we pointed him out since he was wearing a beard, sunglasses and a big robe. In it, he rapped that you should “Respect your mama and your papa and um, don’t kill people.” It was funny and strange, and it elicited some chuckles from the congregation.  Apparently, he was assigned numbers 6 and 7 and that was how he got those two together to “rap.”

Next they did a segment called “Are you smarter than a confirmand?” It went on for a while and we all had trouble even answering some of the simpler questions. The pastor shared that all the kids knew these answers and in their game show version, our son was the big winner. (Whoo-Hoo)

At the end of the service, the pastor calls up the parents and the confirmands and does a blessing over each announcing their passage and welcoming them as members of the church. My husband and I left the pew and went to the pulpit to participate in this portion of the service.

When the service was over, we took some pictures, including some with my parents, and then my sister drove them back home.

Today my sister tells me that, upon her arrival home several days later, she received a letter from our parents that they wrote on that very same Sunday evening, sharing with her that they went to an event that morning where our son was “honored for doing work at his school.”

They’d already forgotten where it was, what it was for, or that my sister was even there. Recorded.