MY BRILLIANT FRIEND is Losing Her Memory, and I am Devastated

Sally is a poet. With published books, magazine articles, teaching workshops and groups, popular at local events for literary aficionados –

I LOVE YOU – © LYON 2026

But she doesn’t get it that she can’t remember talking to me last week, or even yesterday. Or that she ordered a whole bunch of my artwork, and was confused when it showed up at her PO box.

A long time ago, I mentioned to another dear friend that her brain was tanking. She laughed it off.

The next time I said anything, she was annoyed, but kept laughing.

The third time, she blew up at me, how dare you, and all that, and not only blocked me, but convinced most of our mutual friends to do so, too.

I missed her terribly – we had been every-day-phone friends for years.

Not long after – maybe 5 or 6 months – I got news she was dead. Extracted from a pile of smoking, steaming shredded metal rubble right outside of Santa Fe. Destroyed by one of those monstrous 3-trailor-long interstate semi trucks who’d had the green light.

She had forgotten, I guess, that a red light meant ‘stop’.

I have to stop writing for a sec –

And now, one of my best-in-the-world friends is losing it, too.

One of my mottos is ‘I tell it like it is.’ Do you have any idea the colossal cost of living that through in the real world?

I cover my fear of losing people and their cruel criticism, rejection and shunning in the face of truth with bravado I honestly sometimes do not feel. Especially because, when tact was handed out, I was in the bathroom, smoking with all the other blunt Sagittarians.

But deep love for my friend comes first, so I speak up. “You’re losing your memory, Sally, you don’t even remember talking with me yesterday! Please, please find someone to take care of you, drive you around, handle your needs, when you cannot.”

Blammo! Red headed rage blasting in my ears!

But I had to say it. I had to wake her up to the fact that maybe this time, it will be someone else who gets pancaked.

What price privacy, avoiding having someone else in your house caring for you, when hell is about to pay?

That this time cops will call me out of the blue, all the way on this side of the country from where she is, not knowing who else to call. Just because she happened to have one of my packages on her front seat.

Saying that she is shivering freezing, standing by her car on one of New Mexico’s lonely side roads, because she forgot how to drive, or what to do next, and how well do I know her? Do I know where she lives? Does she have a carer?

Or one day, I’d find out that her dried out body was found miles away in the middle of god’s left desert armpit by some hikers, surmising that she’d probably chosen the wrong arroyo to take to get back, and just kept walking and walking . . .

Dammit, this is making me so mad, and I’m crying, because we’ve had such a good run. 30 years!

Dammit dammit dammit!

I have to go see if I can find that book on amazon that tells you how to reverse Alzheimer’s. Hah – as if she’d bloody read it. Any suggestions?

I am SO MAD. And SO sad.

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