In last night's post I said that I would go to a music shop at lunchtime today and buy a cheap electronic metronome so I could set my running cadence. I forgot. I also meant to pick up my prescription. I forgot. There was another thing I was supposed to do but I'd have to remember what that was before I could say that I'd forgotten it.
Consequently, tonight's run was sans metronome. However, I did run at my new quicker pace and, once again, finished in good time and not in a gasping, purple faced, I'm about to have a heart attack kind of way. And on my way around I felt frustrated at being let down by my shocking memory.
Time was when I didn't need to keep notes, a diary or a list because I remembered everything: from things I needed to do on a daily basis to dentist appointments six months down the line. I remember thinking what a waste when someone bought me a Filofax for my birthday in the 80s, "Why would I need a personal organiser? I can do that myself!"
Those days are long gone and now I have to write everything down or else (quite literally), forget it! There have been reports that physical exercise is related in some way to mental fitness. Physical exercise is key, so it seems, in keeping dementia at bay. Mens sana in corpore sano... and all that jazz. But here I am running like Forrest Gump on acid and my brain has turned to mush.
In his final years, my father's Alzheimers got progressively worse. Some of its effects gave me the fondest memories I have of him. I'm not quite sure what he thought of his Alzheimers but I hope that he died smiling as much as I'm smiling now. There is, so it's said, a genetic element in the cause of this dementia. I guess I'm at an increased risk.
As we get older, things work less well than they once did. Often this is not a measured and uniform process: you go for years at a time with very little change indeed but then you go to bed one night and you wake up an older man. Age is, as my gran used to say, a terrible thing.
And I've just remembered what the third thing I was supposed to do today... make a little list!
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