Short term memory.

Okaasan's short term memory blank is just amazing.
I've been watching it up close for 18 months now, but sometimes seeing it in action (or inaction) just takes my breath away.

Last night at dinner we had mochi - little squares of pressed rice that you heat up in the oven and wrap in dry seaweed, dip in soy sauce and eat. We have loads from the newspaper delivery company as a renewal subscription gift and from friends at New Year.
So we are sitting there eating and talking about why we have so much.
Yujiro gets up and gets several bags of the stuff out of the kitchen cabinet to show us.
"Look! we still have loads of the stuff!"
The 3 of us chat about how luckily the Mainichi gives Okaasan presents and the Japan Times gives me nothing.
We 3 eat what we have.
About 3 minutes later we decide to be pigs and eat some more.
Yujiro gets the bags out again of the cabinet just to Okaasan's right and puts some mochi in the oven.
Sits down.
3 minutes later he gets up and brings the mochi from the oven to the table.
We start eating.
"Okaasan, do you want any more?"
"More? Do we have more?"
"Yes, we have a lot from the newspaper company."
"From the newspaper company? Really?"

It really is incredible to see. Writing about it somehow can't give the full feeling of it.
She had NO memory at all of us talking about the mochi glut, of newspaper gifts chat,  of Yujiro handling the bag full of mochi twice just next to her...NOTHING.

I can understand how coversations don't fix in her short-term memory, but actually SEEING the bag full of mochi twice just minutes before - and she didn't remember that.

Incredible. I try to imagine what that must be like - I'm sitting here now at the computer and just now I heard one of the cats rustling through the plastic trash box in the next room, Yujiro went downstairs the shower - these things I KNOW. But how would it be if I had no memory of those things?
Okaasan is really living In The Moment. Now. What she is doing and seeing Now.