Yesterday was a busy day. We went to our monthly YMCA breakfast at the at 8:00. At 10:00 I had a short conference call with our attorney. At 11:45 we went to a lunch for seniors at our church. We came home after that. I changed clothes and then went across town to a foundation event honoring donors.
I arrived home sometime before 4:00. We were scheduled to meet Ellen and some of her friends at a restaurant at 5:00 before attending a performance of Camelot at 7:30. I was concerned that Kate might still be in the yard when I got home but didn’t see her. When I went inside, I saw that she had laid out her clothes on our bed. That made me think that she had remembered that we were going out. I went around to her office (which I call her room) where she keeps all of her clothes. I noticed that the room was cleaned up except for a large pile of things on the floor. She told me to go away, to leave her alone. She said she had to clean up these things. I have learned that when this kind of thing occurs, it is best to follow her instructions and went back to the kitchen where I was reviewing the day’s email.
In a little while, she called for me. I went to her in the guest room where she was dressing. She told me to vacuum the closet where she had taken off her clothes she had had on outside. Then she asked, “What time is he coming?” I said, “Who?” She said, “Morton.” (Bruce Morton is my old roommate at TCU. He and his wife Debbie are going to visit us in June.) I told her the Mortons were not coming until June. She asked, “Then who’s coming?” I told her that no one was coming, that we were going to meet Ellen for dinner at 5:00 and then go to see Camelot after that. The she broke down. It was then that I got the picture. She hadn’t remembered that we were going out at all. She thought we were going to have house guests and needed to have everything cleaned up.
Then she felt she needed to wear different clothes than the ones she was putting on. We went to her closet where I discovered that all the mess that was on the floor in her room was now stuffed into her closet. It was at least 2 feet high and went from the front of the closet to the shelves in the back of the closet, at least 6 feet. It turns out that all her shoes were in the back of the closet; so she couldn’t get to them without taking everything out of the closet. I decided to crawl over the debris and get some shoes. I found a pair that she said would work. She was now in a panic attack. I tried to calm her down. I told her I thought we should cancel our plans to meet Ellen for dinner, that we would simply take our time and go to a restaurant on our own and meet Ellen and her group at the theater. She gladly accepted that suggestion. The panic attack subsided, but she was whipped from the emotion generated by the experience. She didn’t really become herself again until we met Ellen at the musical. The rest of the evening went well. She got into bed quickly and slept well.
It was painful to watch her go through this, and this is something that I could not have prevented. She has had a couple of other experiences in which she was confused about our going somewhere or meeting someone that we had never discussed at all. I believe this particular experience arises from something I said at lunch. Our speaker was from the zoo and botanical garden. I told Kate that we should think about taking the Mortons to the zoo when they are here. She thought that was a good idea. We didn’t discuss it after that, but it must have stuck some way in her mind and transformed into their coming last night.
As painful as this experience was for both of us, I know this is just a precursor of things to come.
