I pay more attention to medical information than I ever did before. Mainly because the older I get, the more mortal I feel. Aches and pains take on a more sinister attitude because I did nothing in particular to cause them. Sometimes it’s nothing more than psychosomatic, made terminal through WebMD and too many pharmaceutical commercials. I do have some basis for worry. Skin cancer (basal cell carcinoma) was the first significant diagnosis that altered my perception of diseases in general. After eleven or so surgeries, I understand it but don’t like hearing the doctor say it. My other nagging concern is still waiting for a diagnosis. I have restless leg syndrome. It doesn’t sound like much, but it has gotten to the point the only way I get a decent night’s sleep is to self-medicate while I wait for an appointment to see a specialist. Again, referring to the self-help universe of WebMD, I worry if it might be the early stages of Parkinson’s but won’t know until the doctor sees me. I am four months into a possible eight-month wait, so I needed to find something else to worry about. Today it is dementia.

The agreement Lisa and I have is quite simple, she cooks, and I clean up after her. She is great in the kitchen and likes to cook, but isn’t keen on the cleaning side. I wouldn’t starve, but don’t like making any sort of mess. I spend as much time cleaning up after myself, as preparing a meal, so anything I create is quick—and typically boring. Because of this arrangement, I know where everything in the kitchen goes and if something is missing or out of place. The cupboard directly above the dishwasher holds most of our day-to-day dishes, including the all-important coffee cups, so I can tell at a glance if the inventory is off. We only use two cups at a time but have six cups total; four large, and two small so it’s easy to keep track of. It began as a missing coffee cup.

Since there are only two of us using the kitchen in the morning, I expect to load two coffee cups into the washer every evening. I loaded the one I saw and continued my methodical (and mindless) cleaning journey. Occasionally, a cup gets left in the living room, so when I only had one cup, I looked around the corner expecting to see it on the end table. It wasn’t there…but I was sure it had been there earlier. At this point I stopped and closed my eyes-trying to picture seeing it. The only cup I saw (in my mind) was the one I had taken downstairs that morning. We have been purging our garage and basement storage so a I took my coffee downstairs to nurse while I pondered an attack plan. The attack was successful and great progress made in beating back the encroaching mountain of stuff. In my world, I need to handle a personal possession-object at least six times before I find resolution. Keep, sell, donate or trash. Normally, it rotates between storage and garage, occasionally making a showing in a living space, but never leaving the building. Today was good—because stuff left the building with more to come.

I was Loading up a utility cart with the last remnants of stuff being relocated when I saw the large coffee cup with liquid sloshing around, on the bottom tray. It was wedged between a vase and miscellaneous objects. I remember thinking I hope it doesn’t spill… After multiple trips back and forth between floors, in and out the elevator, objects coming and going off the cart, the inevitable happened and the liquid spilled. An old towel ( already brown ironically) was found and the spill sopped up. The final stop in this journey was the mom’s 2nd floor unit to drop off the last of the purge. It was here I ran some water from the sink onto the sloppy towel and wiped out the last of the coffee residue. From here I went to the basement (again) and deposited the dirty towel in the garbage. Next was parking the cart in its 1st floor parking spot and heading to the elevator. Next stop, 8th floor and home. I replayed this in my mind over and over, repeating it to Lisa. She remembered that cup. She had grabbed it from the garage where I had left it and put it on the cart. Surly the one I had loaded in the washer was that cup. “Fine, but where is your cup?” was my answer. Again, a silly thing but a cup is missing. At this point she understood the weird dilema and started retracing our steps. First was the garage. Nothing. Next the garbage. Had I accidently wrapped in the towel before tossing it? Of course by now there were bags of trash over my towel, but no cup. By the second storage unit I was questioning my memory. I didn’t recall seeing the cup after the spill, so where is it? We had been in the garage, two storage units, and her mom’s condo, so it had to be one of those places. My last stop was where the spill occurred, but no sign…until I looked down as I was closing the storage unit door, and there it was. I had placed it into a odd-shaped gardening bucket along with two plant food containers so it wouldn’t break.

This wasn’t extraordinary, but it was curiously frustrating for the 30 minutes it took to sort it out. Perhaps it is a silly example of a misplaced object, but for a fleeting moment, you wonder out loud if this is the beginning. I hope it remains a silly story told by an old man—and he actually remembers it happening.