Forgetting to Remember

Forgetting to Remember

- Edward Grinnan

I peered out the kitchen window into the moonless winter night, the snow blanketing our lawn barely a shadow. “Can you see her?” I called upstairs to Julee.

“No.” Julee’s vantage point was better than mine. She should be able to track Gracie’s movements through our yard, thanks to the bright green collar light I always turn on before I let her out. But had I? Had I remembered? It’s practically an automatic thing. I always remember.

“Maybe the battery is dead,” Julee said. No, I knew I’d just replaced that collar light.

A sickening panic stirred within me. Not out of fear for Gracie. She’d be fine. Fear for myself.

I’ve written before about my family’s history of Alzheimer’s. My mother died of it, as did both her sisters, a brother and their father, my Pop-Pop. (I was too young to understand why he was always forgetting my name.) Already some of my older cousins on that side of the family are showing signs. Some days it feels as if I am trying to outrun my shadow.