If Dementia wasn’t so heartbreaking it would be a fascinating thing to watch evolve.

We’ve always heard terms like short term memory, long term memory, muscle memory but I’ve always assumed they worked together. Turns out, Dementia illustrates how independent these things are from one another.

This is perhaps most evident when I watch Jim drive.

Jim’s driving skill is governed by his muscle memory. There is no hesitation when he steers, brakes or even uses the turn signal. They are all deeply ingrained habits that don’t require any thought. His body reacts before his conscious brain tells him to.

He is far more likely to forget where he’s going than cause an accident.

He will ask me three times in a row what we’re having for supper and still not remember that he’s already asked yet he can recite a quote he learned when he was a kid without fail.

Cooking has become a watch-point for Jim’s decline.

We bought a new glass-top stove to replace the old coil burner stove. He began to avoid cooking meals the used the stove-top because the front burners had changed so that each had 2 different sized burners for cooking. He couldn’t keep it straight and gave up after a couple of tries. Yet, on steak night, he easily cooks the multi-step meal as he has for years (steak on the grill, veggies on the stove (on a regular burner not the dual sized one) and twice baked potatoes in the toaster oven).

Memory is truly a weird and wonderful thing.