Grief Brain
Over a year ago, I recall blogging about how distracted I found myself. I had even found myself trying to get into vehicles that weren’t mine – more than once! At the time, I thought that the memory issues would eventually pass, but now I have a sneaky suspicion that some of my inability to remember things is here to stay! I’m sure there are many studies on grief and how it affects our brains but my layperson’s opinion is simply this: the shock and agony of losing a child is a form of trauma which most certainly affects our brains. It causes brain fog in the short term and possibly permanent memory impairment in the long term.
I have found that I now have a great deal of difficulty remembering details, particularly appointments and things I say I will do. For example, this past January, my son Davis turned 34. I have baked him a birthday cake every year of his life. I sat in his house, visiting before his birthday and told him and Carollyn that I would bake the cake. I forgot this conversation the moment I walked out the door and for the first time in his life, his Momma forgot to make his birthday cake! You may wonder how does a mom forget such a thing? I wonder the same! Thankfully my son and daughter-in-law are very loving, gracious and understanding people.
This lack of information retention is rather disconcerting but it is what it is. Now I compensate for my lack of memory by entering every single thing into my phone with an alert set. Not just appointments but also things like “make a cake,” get entered in. Sometimes I simply don’t remember if I’ve done something or not so I have lists of tasks that get checked off so I can keep track of myself. These accommodations are my new normal. I’m sharing this because experiencing deep grief changes people and it is something to be aware of if you are supporting someone in grief. We cannot expect them to be the same person they were before so we have to adjust our expectations of each other. And we also have to adjust our expectations of ourselves.
As an aside and nothing to do with memory, I have a small request for any of you who have read my book. I promise this is the last time I will nag about this (unless I forget! Ba ha ha!). It would be tremendously helpful if you went on Amazon and did a quick review. You simply click on the link for the book, scroll down to customer reviews and voila. I thank you profusely in advance!
