The Fall Garden

If I’m going to do it, I had better get it done soon.  What’s that?  My fall patio garden, that’s what.  I’m about 10 days past what I think is the ideal time to start a fall garden, but I’m hoping that if I can get it going today, I can still have some fall spinach, radish, and other assorted crops that I grow in my bag of Miracle Gro.

I don’t know why I’ve been putting it off so.  I enjoy doing it.  It’s just, I guess, that I haven’t had the opportunity to go by and get a bag of soil and seed.  But that should change today as I will whiz right by the garden center on my way to/from an appointment that I need to keep.  Now, if I can only remember to stop…

Do you catch yourself forgetting things that you really want to remember?  Or do you find yourself writing more notes to yourself or putting more things on your reminder phone calendar?  As you get older, are you finding it more difficult to remember where you’ve put something?  “It will be in the last place that you look, dear.”

Something seems to happen to our “rememberers” as we age.  They just don’t work quite as well, apparently, unless we’re trying to recall something that happened 40 years ago.  Then they work quite well.  It’s almost as if they want to go back to the past and live there when the body that they’re in is definitely living in the present.

I think, though, that having those kinds of issues with memory as we age is a blessing compared with those who suffer the effects of dementia of some kind.  There is something organic…something basic that causes some of us to pretty much not be there anymore.  Folks with dementia present in different ways, but the end result is often the same.  Dementia is one of the most hideous ailments known because it takes away the personhood of the individual and replaces it with a body that has no apparent soul.

On a spiritual level, I haven’t a clue whether the person is “still there” or not in cases of severe dementia.  No one has ever been cured of the illness to be able to tell us what happens during the period of dementia.  Do we perceive, but cannot respond appropriately?  Do we not perceive anything?  Is there any logical functional process during this time?  Or are we “not there,” as it seems to those on the outside?  No one knows.

So while I’m flustered by not being able to remember where I put those keys, I am grateful that at least for now, I have the “normal” forgetfulness of aging and not the beginnings of dementia.  That may come later…who knows.  Until then, I’ll do my best to remember to stop at the garden center to pick up my bag of soil and see if they have any seed packets left so I can get in that fall garden this year.