For anyone wondering what seniors do, often it is dealing with
the consequences of forgetting. I spent Friday night and Saturday last week
looking in vain for a lost hearing aid, an expensive item to replace and thus
causing me great angst. In the end, it all turned out well, thanks to an
ancient Catholic tradition in which I have never placed much stock. But first
the details of my travails.
I have used hearing aids for decades and never lost one. On the
other hand, my wife just lost one of a pair purchased less than a year ago.
After searching the house and car for days, even inquiring at the stores where
we shopped for groceries and prescriptions, we ordered a replacement, under
warranty. My older one would have cost much more. Too late, her lost one turned
up in a grocery bag.
My saga began with something I never do: After cleaning the aids
before retiring Thursday night, I put them in their case and left them on the
kitchen table. Invariably, I always leave them in my home office. On Friday, I
did not go looking for them until evening. Imagine my consternation when I
found the box empty.
My wife said she knew nothing about them, but I felt that unless
a burglar broke into the house and took them, she must have moved them. A
24-hour search began, starting where I thought she might have put them. I soon
found one on her bedside table, so I knew that she must have moved them even
though she had no memory of having done so.
Both of us had a very bad night, and Saturday morning she said
that after further reflection she remembered finding one on the floor and
putting it on her bedside table. But she had no inkling what happened to the
second one.
I looked in the kitchen again, even going through the trash and
garbage can piece by piece without success. Then I went through my office
looking everywhere with the same result. At that time, having no place else to
look, I told her I was giving up, resigned to pay whatever it cost for the
replacement. I spent the day doing other things. Then, feeling tired, I lay
down to rest. While there, I remembered that my mother always prayed to St.
Anthony when she needed help finding something.
But I rejected the thought that it might help. It seemed as
futile as my late mother-in-law's practice of placing a statue of St. Jude on
her TV when the reception was not good. I never saw much improvement, but she
seemed to draw some comfort from it. I decided it could not hurt to try once
more.
On a chest where my wife has boxes with jewelry and other
knickknacks, I opened a small box filled with earrings. We had been through it
several times, but now my eyes fell upon what looked like a partially hidden
hearing aid. I kept staring at it, fearing I would be disappointed again.
Slowly, I lifted it out, examined it, and put it in my ear. It was the missing
one.
Did St. Anthony help me? I do not know. But I do know that we
spend too much time reveling and writing about what we know. We ought to pay
more attention to what we do not know. Henry David Thoreau wrote: "Direct
your eye right inward, and you will find a thousand regions in your mind yet
undiscovered."