Words In Common

What do the following words have in common: closet, fork, pocket, water, guest room, scarf, underwear, sandwich, cell phone, pillow, dish washer?

For most people the words have nothing in common but in Gregory and my world, the commonality is that they are all associations with meaning that do not work regularly anymore. There are many other words in the list which come and go and sometimes disappear forever.

The problem is two fold: 1) A thought is expressed with words, 2) Words trigger thoughts. Recently, neither are functioning predictably. Up until now Gregory's struggled with being able to pull the words to match his thinking, now hearing words does not pull the correct or any image in his thinking.

First his use and recall of language began to suffer. He was not always able to put words to his thoughts. The thoughts and memories still existed, perhaps like a photograph in his mind, but he was not able to describe that picture with words (a skill which you I and I take for granted.) Sometimes between the two of us, we are able to attach words to the picture and sometimes the picture fades before that is accomplished.

Now other people's use of language doesn't always work for him. He is increasingly not making associations between the spoken word and its referent. That seems to tell me that the pictures my still exist but in his mind but now the pictures do not have the cognitive labels they used to.

In the past, when he would hear the word "glove" he would see the image "glove" in his mind even though he might not be able to say the word "glove" when he was thinking about one. Now those associations are taking a new turn and increasingly he cannot do either on his own. Sometimes when I say "glove" he thinks "scarf," sometimes he thinks "glove," and sometimes he thinks nothing. When he is looking for his gloves he does not know what to call them. When I ask where his gloves are, he does not know what that means.

Again, with the passage of time,we become more and more aware that the rules of this game not only are constantly shifting, but most often do not exist. Go figure that one out!