Someone else is driving

Normally I'm considered to be a relatively self-sufficient person, but in the first couple of years after I became a woman who had outlived her husband, I was mush. Couldn't make a decision, lost things I'd had in my hands only the minute before and even forgot the names of long time friends. Foggy. Unfocused. Looney tunes.

Thinking back, I'm fortunate not to have been robbed, or worse, attacked by some intruder. Can't count the number of times when I finally located my house keys, they were firmly installed in the lock - on the outside of the back door. Or, how often I'd awaken and look outside to see the detached garage door standing wide open. Bad enough the "people" door to the garage was never locked, but leaving that gaping hole of a garage door in the open position was an screaming invitation to "Come in, steal me blind." Apparently I didn't own anything worth stealing - or I had a guardian angel looking after me in my deranged state.

I'd put sugar water on to boil for the hummingbird feeder, get muddled-headed and leave the house, only to return an hour or so later to charred sugar in the bottom of a pan and a really smokey, smelly kitchen. The attention span of a ripe grapefruit! I'd go to the basement to transfer a load of clothes from the washer to the dryer and return upstairs with a screwdriver to tighten a screw on a receptacle cover. More than once I had to rewash laundry because I'd left it sit in the washer until it soured. To be honest, I STILL go from room to room with a mission in mind and when I get there, I wonder - "what in the hell am I doing in here?"

In talking with other widows, this Sister Mary Amnesia syndrome - nice house, nobody home - is commonplace. There's such a disconnection with reality, a feeling of disorientation. The worst part is we don't even react to our stupid attacks, just shrug them off or simply not acknowledge them and go on to repeat our foibles. We're heard saying, "I haven't lost my mind, I've only lost my husband." Only? Maybe not so much.

Sandy