The Address Book

My mom had been looking through an old address book.  You know, the kind where you wrote the addresses and phone numbers of friends and family in the days before cell phones and contact lists. She told me she came across an entry and just couldn't think of who these people were. I was expecting it to be some old friends of my dad who she hadn't seen or heard from in decades. Nope, it was my cousin John and his wife. John is my first cousin and my mother's only nephew. He lived down the street from my grandparents and we saw him, at a minimum, every Sunday in the 1970s when my grandmother was still alive. We spent every major holiday together when he and I were kids, and after John got married 35 years ago, we spent every major holiday with him and his wife. These are not distant relatives.

After I told her who they were and talked about them as well as my other cousins and my uncle, she said she knew who they were but she couldn't picture them, or more importantly, him. I asked who she was trying to picture: the little boy version of him or the grown man with a mustache and bald head? I showed her a recent photo of him on Facebook. No recognition.  Granted, we haven't seen them since before COVID, but he's basically looked the same for the last 30+ years.

I asked her if she remembered John's older brother who died in a motorcycle crash in 1972. After a minute, she told me in full detail about visiting him in the ICU before he died. It's amazing how this disease works. She couldn't place the name of someone she's known for more than 60 years. Someone whose last name is her maiden name. Someone she's seen countless times over most of her life. But she could remember the details of one incident 53 years ago.

To say this freaked me out would be an understatement. Who will she forget next?