It has been five weeks since Dad died. At this point of the grief process, the part of my brain that remembers things is not working as well as usual. Oh yeah, there’s a word for that, “memory”. It’s not just that I am not remembering facts. I am leaving out steps to different processes. For example, when scheduling, it is important to scroll down so that I can see my schedule for the ENTIRE day, not just the morning. I offered a parent a 4:30 pm appointment for a Tuesday because the view of the day, which only included the morning and early afternoon, was free.  When she returned my email to accept the appointment time, I scrolled down only to discover that someone else was already scheduled in that spot. I did the same thing with a different family for Thursday. Those are two examples. I have more.

I was just in San Francisco visiting a friend and meeting her 7 year-old daughter. I took a bunch of really nice photos of them. We traveled around the city all day and I very carefully checked to see that I had my camera many times. So many times. All of the times except for the one time I accidentally left it somewhere and lost it. I had taken two trips on Uber between the time I last knew where it was and the time I got back to my hotel to discover that it was not in my bag. I contacted the Uber drivers. Neither had seen it. One of the calls was unsettling. The driver didn’t speak much English and I did not speak any of her language. She seemed a little distressed like I was accusing her of stealing or something.

Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun on the trip. However, there was a lot of socializing, not only with my friend and her daughter, but with other people. My friend lives on the East Coast. She and I talked about my going out to see her to meet her daughter. At the time, Dad was not well, and I did not want to travel that far. Although none of the physicians has informed us that his death was coming soon (I don’t think they knew), I could see that his health was rapidly deteriorating. My friend is also a psychologist. The big psychology conference was in San Francisco this year. She suggested that we meet there. It’s only a 2-hour flight for me. So I went and I bumped into many fellow psychologists, especially those that I’d gone to school with. I was happy to see them but I was not entirely up to it. It was draining.

In general, I am finding socializing to be pretty draining right now. I need a lot of time to myself. That was also true during my breast cancer treatment. If I don’t get enough alone time, I get sad and irritable.

I am happy to be back at home. I have a quiet evening to myself.