THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN FOR MEDIUM’S DAILY CUPPA WITH A WORD LIMIT OF 150.
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Yesterday, it almost happened. And, this morning, it drove me from my bed. I’m always up early. It’s when I write. But today’s matin was at 3:00 am instead of 4.
My mother lived to 95 and died in a demented state. A clinical word, and I don’t know any other way to put it. She had forgotten who she was, even that she had loved coffee for ten decades. I think her decline began eight years earlier with repetitive stories.
“I’d like to show you this photo…,” I said to my friend Rick, in the middle of a spirited political discussion, and then realized I’d shown him the same photo when I’d come through his front door two hours earlier.
Rick, 80, knowingly replied, “Welcome to the club.”
If this incident had happened when I was 55 instead of 75, I would have brushed it off.
Not this dawn!
