Confabulation, per Wikipedia: a memory error consisting of the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world. It is generally associated with certain types of brain damage.
It’s called “honest lying” because the memory is there — it just shouldn’t be. It troubles me for two reasons.
Gary has been showing some possible evidence of this. He and I had a stupid argument in which he insisted our tea towels came from Williams Sonoma, he remembered details of the visit, things the salesperson said, and how we disagreed on the color. I then showed him where there is a Pottery Barn label stitched into the hem of the tea towel that we bought online, and just broke his mind. Then there were two other occasions when similar things happened.
But now I’ve shown some evidence of this during this past week. There are conversations that I remember, in detail, and it turns out those conversations absolutely could not have happened with those participants at that time. At all. Impossible. Yet there it is in my head as if it happened yesterday. (And, may I say, no boring tea towel nonsense. I really shone during these conversations. I win all the annual Confabulation Screenplay Awards.)
Happily, neither of us has the other six warning signs of early dementia. Still, I contacted the neurologist’s office, and they tossed me to a psychiatric counselor, and she’s going to ask the doctor.
I just have this sickening sensation encompassing my heart and gut that says, “This is step one of dementia, and the others will come next, and then both of us will die squabbling over our differing delusions.”