For quite a while I have noticed that Kate often does not recognize people in photos. I have attributed all of this to challenges with her vision. An experience this week has made me question this conclusion. While at Panera the other day, I showed her a couple of pictures of our grandchildren, Brian and Heather. They were pictures that Rachel had posted on Facebook. The pictures I showed her were very clear and large enough that she should have been able to tell who they were, but she had no idea.
For me this was one of the “wake-up” moments when I recognize that her memory is worse than I normally believe. It also reminded me of two other recent experiences. One was after a visit with Ann and Jeff Davis a couple of weeks ago. We had had a good visit. As we departed in the car, she asked, “What are their names again?”
The other involves another grandson, Randy. Jesse sent a text the other day with a picture of him with his new braces. She didn’t recognize him. I didn’t think that much about it at the time because it was a close up taken with a phone; so there was some distortion that could have confused her. That may be what caused her not to recognize him, but I wonder if she is just forgetting the visual images of people who are close to her. I don’t mean to suggest that she has forgotten that she has grandchildren and how many she has. More specifically, I think this is a forgetting of what they look like. I should note that they all live out of town; so we don’t see them on a regular basis. We see the ones in Lubbock about two or three times a year. The same is true for the twins who live in Memphis.
