Realizing that I probably need to tell my children more about my symptoms

After spending time car shopping with my twenty-eight-year-old daughter, I took her back to her apartment. Then she reminded me to keep an eye on one of my tires. I told her that I didn't remember which tire it was. We just had someone put air in the tire at the car dealership and it was only about fifteen minutes from her apartment. She said, “Mom, we just got it filled minutes ago.” As if I had any choice in what I remember. I told her, “Yes I know that, but this is just something that I deal with. “I think that she just couldn't understand how I could forget something that had just happened. She commented that she hoped that she never had to deal with that. It almost made me cry, but I didn't let her know this.

As I drove home from her apartment, which only takes about twenty minutes, I had some time to think about this conversation with her. I wondered why she just didn't get it. Then I had one of those “ah ha” moments and I realized why. I think that I have spent a lot of my children's lives protecting them. First, when they were growing up, I was protecting them from their dad's anger. Now I seem to be protecting them from knowing what I deal with on a daily basis while living with a memory impairment. I think that I do this so that they don't worry about me. Instead, I have lost all this time that I should have been educating my own children. What I think that I'm going to do is just keep track of my symptoms over the next month and type a document on my computer. Then I will to sit down and talk to them. I need to somehow get them to understand. None of my children know about the fact that several weeks ago, after I returned home from the mall, that suddenly I didn't recognize my living room. They don't know about the fear that I had that evening and how I somehow got through it. I need to find a balance of how to include them more in what is happening to me, yet not have them worry about me.