Even though we’re in the middle of a heat wave, the past few days I’ve gone outside in relative cool of the early morning to do some much-needed work — trimming overgrown plants, weeding, deadheading, and whatever else I happen to notice when I’m out there. It’s exhausting work, not just the activity but because “relative cool” in no way means “cool.” There is still a lot of weeding to do, but luckily, much of it is not in my view, so I can pretend the weeds aren’t there until I again get the inclination to work that hard.
Yesterday, after I finished working and recuperated a bit, I had to run errands and pick up a couple of food items. I stopped at the nearby dollar store, walked inside, and stopped cold. I stared around at all the Halloween items, totally confused. “What month is this?” I asked a nearby clerk. She laughed, knowing exactly what I meant, and replied, “It’s August.”
Whew! For a minute there, I thought something had happened when I’ve been all caught up in working, like perhaps a month or two passing without my realizing it. I joked and told her that the early seasonal products were not fair for us older folk living alone because we have a hard enough time keeping track of the days.
Although considerably younger, she admitted she’d felt the same way when they got the shipment of Halloween items, and even worse, they’d already received their Thanksgiving shipment.
I hope the moment of befuddlement, not knowing what month it was, isn’t a prognostication of my future. I certainly don’t like the feeling of utter befuddlement. It’s bad enough that the world is passing me by —
I had to stop there and think. Is the world passing me by, and if it is, is it a bad thing? And if it is a bad thing, do I care?
Actually, no. I don’t care, as long as I don’t get confused. For me, confusion is too disorienting, and leaves me . . . confused.
At least there’s no confusion in my mind now. It’s still August. We’re still in a heatwave, though it’s expected to cool down in a couple of days, and I’m still me, not any sort of out-of-time “Van Winkle.”
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One
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