I fell to earth yesterday. My three good days took a hit. It happened in the afternoon. I was looking at social media and realized I’d missed a Monday evening event to which I was invited. I sent a text to the person who made the invitation, apologizing. Then later as I was checking my phone messages, I realized I’d missed a call the day before from the same person with minor tweaks to the directions. It was a double hammer blow. I called the person. Apologized, again. With my voice.

Of course, I always look for lessons in disaster, and this is what I found. Basically, it was my ineptness that caused my catastrophe. I should have put the event in my phone calendar rather than rely on my faulty memory. It’s probably a best practice regardless of age, but mine is increasing and with it some of my mental acuity is diminishing. A bit. Not sure how much actually, because I feel as though my writing has gotten better and my understanding of the world a little sharper. But there’s enough loss that I can forget an engagement quite easily.

It's also possible to think that an occurrence of this nature means that good days are always followed by bad days, which if you dwell on that idea would, over time, start to make the good days less sweet when they happen. But I’ve always tried to avoid that route. I tend to enjoy the good days and think they’ll continue for ever despite ample evidence to the contrary. Partly, I guess, because I like the good days and I try to hearken back to the good days for thoughts of how days can be when other days go bad. And that’s what I’ll do today as I try to deal with yesterday. It will just take a little time to process the data and offer myself forgiveness.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale