Time and Dates and Events

The activity of marking and acknowledging life events was Cheryl’s job. All through 2025 I realized how much I missed her and her organizational ability when my date dyslexia would dissipate for a moment and would remember that I forgot some important event like a birthday or anniversary. These, of course, were an important acknowledgment of some life altering event. Something to be commemorated. Something to be celebrated. Or something to be commiserated.

To her life was a continuum but it was marked by various events both good and bad.

When she moved to a memory care facility and I disassembled her office back into a guest bedroom, I developed a simple sorting method for her clutter. Clutter is an unkind word because in her own mind as it disintegrated she was doing real work and “getting things done.” It breaks my heart when I think about it. Scattered in various storage spaces in my condominium now I have collected the clutter into three general categories: pictures, letters, notes.

The pictures are easy. They are of our family and friends and sometimes Christmas postcards that show the growth of often far flung friends and family. In earlier times she sorted and organized these. During the last few years of her life she sorted and organized but the associations were meaningless to others, as well as, her after she had done so.

The letters did not need separation or organization. These were separated into their own file folder. Cheryl and I wrote many many letters back and forth while in high school. I have these collected with my own response in my office.

Her notes I sorted into their own tubs and a couple boxes. I hope to write a memoir as I review her notes to herself.

Today I went through the big black book that we (I) purchased for her to help her remember birthdays and anniversaries when her cognitive function was fading. The BBB is its own category. It has all the dates of family and friends births and anniversaries and in some cases, their deaths. It has also collected many other notes and pictures paper-clipped and stapled here and there at random. This coming year I hope to remember my family’s birthdays and although I am not a card sender, I can acknowledge the date.

It is hard for me to go through this book to recover birth data because it contains cognitive data and the lack there of as well. This note, stuck in the book on April 15^th, reminds me how upon occasion her cognitive ability returned for short periods

– DO NOT worry about greeting cards for the W/girls for now) (too much stress –

I do not know which W/girls she referred to but her mind was telling her to relax a bit. The note is printed in all caps. Mileena’s birthday is noted on the page above this note and the parenthesis are askew, nevertheless, she recognized her internal stress about getting it right and wrote herself a note to let it go. She consistently wrote notes to herself about this or that and attached the notes to that or this. The attachment did not always go with the note.

I did achieve my goal. I constructed a calendar of my own and slid it into a plastic sheet protector. I laid it on the kitchen table so that I can ignore it in a brighter light filled room. (When she was alive it resided in the hallway to our bedroom.)

I am ready for 2026.

Carpe Diem.