---

I Think I'll Go

Even while she disappears,
while she and we forget she’s there,
Miss Nancy finds more ways
to say she’s sorry for being here.

I know, I know, I hear you,
say this isn’t so,
say this is some over-the-top
way to emphasize her pain
and mine and
i don’t know
so many others who
call her mom and aunt
and friend,

some way to promote
empathy 
for dementia, 
for memory loss, 
for what disconnection
does for all of us,

and yes, that’s true, 
so true, so very true,
but mostly this is 
Miss Nancy apologizing
on the phone 
with every call
saying
Oh, you’re busy,
I think I’ll go.

---

This poem was posted on Substack first, the latest poem for the blog I’m keeping, “Sorry To Bother You,” in which I weekly post poems and reflections on dealing with memory loss.

This poem was written to be read out loud, which I do in the video above.

For a poem written out loud, right now I am writing with a tempo in mind. I can see the words and hear the words in my head as I’m writing.

This particular poem had almost zero revisions. I did not discuss it with my poetry mentor. I did not change it before I posted it on Substack along with a reflection.

I’m not bragging here. I think the poem probably deserves revision, that it could be clearer, that it could have a better internal logic. For instance, it isn’t readily clear in the line “say this isn’t so” what the “this” refers to.

If you have time to look at the poem and time to reflect on the conclusion, you’ll realize that “this” is the fact that Miss Nancy is disappearing.

The stanzas are unique for me–they are not my normal style where the stanzas are uniform in length.

Here they correspond to the way I speak the poem–they are a bit of shorthand for how I hear the poem in my head.

And as for that, I recorded this poem about nine times. I was tempted to record once and be done, but I realized that I was getting better at reading it as I went on.

It’s so easy to record and delete the unused versions. I tend to be protective of the space on my computer, but it is good to remember that things can be deleted. They can be removed.

It’s hard not to draw parallels between this fact and memory loss, but I’m going to not do that.

Except, I guess, that I actually did in thinking out loud here.

There are a few moments in the poem that work nicely for reading aloud. The rhyme in the first stanza with “disappears”, “there” and “here” doesn’t come across as a sing song in any way and I’m supposing that one listen or read through the poem would miss this.

I also like the end of the poem, hitting the so-called nail on the head with what this poem was about all the time–my mom slowly removing herself from the world, including from me.

This is probably a typical arc for memory loss though I’m sure not the only one. The sufferer pulls away and retreats into their inner space. Separate themselves from the substance of who they became over their life.

And watching them go through this is only one of the many pains of dementia.

About which I will soon, I’m afraid, be writing.