My father had systems that baffled me for years. I didn't understand them, and often what we don't understand, we tend to mock. It was much easier to poke fun of his enigmatic reminders and notes scattered over every inch of our home than it was for me to try and understand why there were notes. Sometimes, I feel angry that he never discussed his memory problems with me until we could no longer have a dialogue about them. Feeling somewhat frustrated, I asked him the other day, fruitlessly, "Why didn't you ever talk to me about your memory problems?" And he looked at me with this pleading look of confusion, I never knew that I had a memory problem! Whose fault is it that we never had a discussion about this? Is it his, or is it really mine? When I was younger, it was easy to make jokes about it. One Christmas, when I was in my early 20's, I bought him a book on how to improve his memory as a joke. I thought it was funny. I don't think it is so funny...
Notes to My Future Self.