Losing your memory used to be something that happened in movies. Then it became something that happened to my mother, slowly, painfully slowly over two decades. Six weeks ago it became something that happened to my wife.
Six weeks ago I'd never heard of encephalitis. Six weeks ago I didn't know that flu-like symptoms followed by confusion were a dial 999 emergency. Six weeks ago my wife could remember who had given our children every single item of gifted toys and clothes. And then suddenly, after a few days of sickness, headaches and a horrifyingly frightening 48 hours of desperate confusion, she woke up and didn't even know or remember who I was.
I don't know if I will ever be able to bring myself to write about those six weeks. We talked about a book when she first started to pull out of it. What had happened and was happening to her seemed so far fetched and improbable it was surely a story that had to be told.
"This is like a first date," I said, as I explained that I was a writer. "No," she replied, "this is the flirting before the first date."
But now she's really getting better all that I want to do is to put it behind us and get back to normal.