A Spool of Blue Thread

I can feel my mind unraveling.

There are names I don't remember, faces I don't recall.  Whole chunks of my life, months and even years, have faded from Hopper to Monet.  High school is a vague beige wash.  Childhood a couple of lilies in a dull blue sea.  I regret nothing- but only because I don't remember it.

It's tragic, of course, as every loss is tragic.  It's dull, of course, as every loss is dull. 

And it may be signatory- my grandparents had Alzheimers; my father has Alzheimers; my aunt and uncle have Alzheimers.  There's research to suggest that the brain changes that go on to be so devastating in people who develop Alzheimers start not in the seventies, but in the thirties-  and I can definitely feel my circuits dimming, jamming, slowing, flickering-

whatever verb you want to cough up in an attempt to demonstrate your verbal fluency, the fact that you can still string a sentence together, damnit-

I figure I have about twenty five writing years left.

Does that fact that you will lose a skill make it incumbent on you to use that skill to its fullest capacity in as short a time as possible? To burn through it before it burns away?  Or should you learn to live without it, wean yourself bit by bit from its grip so when it goes, it doesn't knife as deep? 

You could beg the same question of love, of course.  Or beauty, or money, or peak oil, or the various discontinued varieties of M&Ms.  Hold fast or let go?  Hang on or Hang loose?

There might be an answer- I can't recall.