{"id":6644,"date":"2021-07-20T07:29:51","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T11:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=6644"},"modified":"2021-07-20T07:29:51","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T11:29:51","slug":"hours-of-angst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2021\/07\/hours-of-angst\/","title":{"rendered":"Hours of Angst"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was just this side of asleep. I was lying in bed, early morning, remembering my just-waking thoughts.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had realized two really good points regarding a thorny concept I\u2019d been pondering for weeks. It was a breakthrough and very clarifying for me. Even at that early hour, I was pleased with myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I lay there with my eyes closed but my thoughts clear, I was thinking, \u201cMaybe I should write this down before I lose it.\u201d But they were such clear and meaningful ideas, how could I possibly forget them? Just as I made the conscious decision to not write them down with the pen and journal that were right next to my bed, a third idea popped into my mind that was a nice complement to the first two.<\/span><\/p>\n

What couldn\u2019t have been more than a minute later, I rolled out of bed, only to realize that I didn\u2019t remember those ideas of which I\u2019d been so proud.<\/span><\/p>\n

I sat quietly on the edge of the bed and focused, but they were gone, very gone. I was pissed off at myself for not writing them down. In a matter of seconds, I\u2019d forgotten what had been so clear and memorable. I tried to focus on what I\u2019d forgotten. Then I became concerned. Was there something wrong with me?<\/span><\/p>\n

My wife rolled over, asked me what was going on, and I explained. She was understanding, comforting and reassuring. The harder I tried to remember them, the more gone those lovely ideas became. I had never forgotten something so completely and so quickly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then I got scared. Is this the beginning of the inexorable decline? Am I on the downhill slide? Is this the beginning of the end? And then scared became really scared.<\/span><\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t felt this anxious before. The closest I could remember was when I had to force myself to walk into the courtroom to deliver the closing argument in my first murder trial. But even that was not like this scared and lost feeling. I felt, with my toe, the edge overlooking a precipice of degenerative dementia.<\/span><\/p>\n

I sat with this feeling as I worried. For some reason, I thought of the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl quote, \u201cBetween stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.\u201d I tried to calm myself by thinking how it\u2019s harder on the people who love a person with dementia. That didn\u2019t work at all. I was still scared.<\/span><\/p>\n

I remembered my wife\u2019s advice to let it go and eventually the thoughts would return. But it was difficult to relax. To me, in those moments, dementia was no longer a theoretical concept. I could feel it in my stomach.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, my wife was right. Late the next day, after hours of angst, I remembered ever-so-lightly that third complementary thought. An hour or so later, my two breakthrough ideas popped full-blown back into my consciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

Intense. Sobering. Educational. Humbling. Next time I\u2019ll write them down.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was just this side of asleep. I was lying in bed, early morning, remembering my just-waking thoughts. I had realized two really good points regarding a thorny concept I\u2019d been pondering for weeks. It was a breakthrough and very…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Hours of Angst<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

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