This is a stupid story, but maybe not.

It's about nothing, but maybe it's about everything.

Maybe it's the beginning of the end. That's what I worry about.

My brother rotted to death with schizophrenia and died at 31. My uncle with dementia was so bad he was reduced to bellowing in a hospital bed, tied down with a belt.

Am I next? Whatever this thing is that I have, and they've called it a dozen different things over the years (each of which  I was expected to "accept" as the unassailable wisdom of professionals), it may be rotting my brain. Or maybe it's the drugs I take to function with it.

I am having "holes". Holes of time, in which nothing happens, except that it must, because on the other side of the hole I realize that a lot of things must have happened.

My brain doesn't work at the best of times, it's pretty much fucked. So this little story may not strike you as much.

Before her 6th birthday on Hallowe'en, my sweet little granddaughter looked up at me with her big brown eyes and said, "Grandma, can I have a locket?" She had long admired mine, with tiny heart-shaped cutouts of the grandkids. She wanted a locket of her own, and by God I was going to get it for her. 

It took the usual amount of energy traipsing around the mall, eliminating the $200 models. Finally I found a child's locket that would hold photos. I presented it to her on her birthday and she was pleased, but couldn't get it off because the chain was too short. I told her, "I'll find you one that's long enough to go over your head."

And I looked, and looked, and looked, in my usual bloodhound manner. And in the cheapo dollar store, I finally found something called an anklet for a dollar.

I sat in the mall furiously working on this with my fingers, taking it all apart into four separate little chains and working to fuse them together, in the process removing four little loops with charms on them. A very obese woman sat beside me and asked me what I was doing. We had a short conversation, in which she presided over the transformation of the chain. Then she left, and the moment came when I looked at my masterpiece. It was beautiful: gleaming, sparkly, and whole, and just the right size. For a dollar.

As I left the mall, I ran into the woman again, and she said, "Did you get it?" I held it up proudly, and she exclaimed over it. "She'll love it," she said.

And yes, probably she would have loved it, except that the FUCKING THING IS GONE NOW AND I DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS.

I had it on the kitchen counter. It was sitting there. And then it was gone. Big crater of emptiness, like an alcoholic blackout, except that I've been sober 20 years. I suddenly realized at a certain point, "It isn't there any more." The more protective part of my mind, which is down to shreds by now, kept saying, "It's there, it's there, it's there."

It wasn't, and it isn't.

I turned the house upside-down with increasing panic. I felt sick. Yes, it was only a dollar chain (sparkly, twinkly, just right). But that wasn't it.

If it was there, then it wasn't there, I must have put it somewhere. Oh yes. Probably, somewhere where I would be sure to see it next time I saw my granddaughter.

Every day now, not just once but several times, I forget a word. I used to forget the names of actresses and things like that, but now it's - . I just can't remember a word. Sometimes it comes back to me, and sometimes I have to search for a synonym like a stutterer.

These aren't difficult words at all. I'd tell you, but I've forgotten what any of them are.

My husband, much older than me, reassures me he's been having this for years. It doesn't bother him. Nothing bothers him. But deterioration bothers me. It bothers me a lot.

I didn't find the chain. It is permanently gone. So how much of my brain is gone? Why is it that later that day, when trying to spiff up an old pair of white shoes, the cap of the shoe white bottle popped off like a champagne cork, puking white crap all over my best jeans. I hustled them into the wash, but they were bleached as with a bucket of white paint, and ruined.

Are there any women of a certain size out there who know how many pairs of jeans you have to try on to get even close to a fit? (Fifteen?)"Bad" was hovering over me, and for the millionth time I wondered what I had done to deserve it.

I cope by using humour, so much so that most people assume I'm basically OK even in the most horrible circumstances.  This has been true through suicidal depression and even psychosis. But this really isn't too goddamn funny. This is a road that only goes one way. It's a slow trudge to the kind of deterioration that has devoured a number of my friends and relatives.

I'd rather die than go through this. I'd do it, I really would, but I know it would traumatize my family. It's stupid, I know, and if anyone is reading this they're probably thinking it's small potatoes.

But that's just it. I've lived through the sudden deaths of friends, not to mention long-drawn-out deaths from cancer. Close relatives have been suddenly taken from me. I've suffered numerous reversals in most areas of life and have gone so crazy I had to be hospitalized. All this I could take. Actually, I'm very good in a crisis, the "strong one", which amazes everyone. But this. But this.

I can't live in a mind that won't work any more. I can't gibber and wander and make nonsensical statements. I can't leave the dinner burning on the stove and start a fire. I can, actually, but even the fact that I might horrifies me. I will become a burden. I will freak everyone out. Worst of all, I will lose my writing, the one constant through all the bizarre craziness of my life.

Maybe I won't, but after the massive meltdown of 2005 (an emotional threshhold, like 1990 when I crashed and burned and finally got sober), I can't pray any more. I'm not sure anything is there. This isn't like the parable of the lost coin. The chain won't turn up. I know it won't. I'm going to go back to the cheapie store today and try to find another anklet and disassemble it, but I don't think I can pull off that feat twice. I'll fumble and shake and drop essential pieces.

Old age only goes one way. It's a trudge towards oblivion. You can give me your "live in the moment", your "golden years". But how many brain cells do I lose in a single day?

Should I "accept" this? I've never accepted anything in my life. And I'm not about to start now.