50 First Dates

My daughters and I have talked about this before- Joe is kind of like the movie "50 First Dates". If you have seen it, you will understand. If you haven't, I suggest renting it as it is a good movie. Each day is a new day because of some kind of memory loss or amnesia in the movie. With Joe it is the same way. Today I asked him if he enjoyed his visiting with a friend, Roger, and he said he had not seen him. I read the note from Roger that he left for me at the group home which said "It was so nice to see Joe. It was really good to see him and I will come back and visit him." He also inferred that he was not sure Joe knew who he was. Joe had not seen Roger for at least fifteen years-he used to work with him and knew him for 25 years or more. We went to two of Roger's daughters weddings and had several social occasions with him and his wife, and they were good friends to Joe. I told Joe that Roger had been to see him 4 days ago as the note was dated 1/10/07. Joe did not remember that he had been there. He lives in the moment only and that is why I want each moment to be good for him. He did make a remark today that no one wants to come see him. The truth is, he wouldn't remember anyway, which is not a reason to not visit him. He loves people to visit him and he laughs and is so happy someone is there to see him. That is all I want, for him to be happy.

I always tell Joe the news- and today I told him Dennis Green was fired by the Cardinals and the coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers would be the new coach. He got so excited and said "Dennis Green is fired! I knew they would fire him! "
I take him the Arizona Informant every week when it arrives and this week's paper had a large insert on Martin Luther King which I showed him. I told him tomorrow was MLK Day, and showed him the large photo of Martin and Coretta taken many years ago. Then I told him Coretta was dead, and he just yelled "when did she die?" I guess I had forgotten to tell him, or he did not remember. I also told him about Ruthie, Sharon and Jan's mother dying on Friday and Joe was very sad about that and talked about it for awhile.
Tomorrow he will not remember any of those things, but it makes him happy to know and talk about it, so I always tell him everything in the news he would be interested in.
I am very tearful this weekend for some reason, and I cried when I left him and cry this evening, and cried last night. I still get into these moods as I am grieving him really even though he is alive. I grieve the loss of not having him present mentally and being the part of my life he always was for past 36 years. I miss him. I miss who he was. I just try to bring him a smile and laughter when I see him.
He made me laugh today also. Just before I left, he said,
" You know Roger is totally bald." I don't know if this was true memory that surfaced or whether Roger is now bald or not! But I have my doubts!
Yes, each day is a new day. In more ways than one sometimes!