Lost Hearing Aids

Tonight I called Mom "Goggie" (Goe-gie) It's a nickname given to her by her brother's children. She asked me who told me she was called that. She asked like she was really thunderstruck that I knew that was one of her nicknames.

Sometime today while giving Joe privacy in his bedroom, he exchanged his new hearing aids for a pair of old ones. Of course, the old ones were replaced because they needed to be, and also because they didn't work anymore. Why he kept them, I don't know; maybe the same reason he kept the 9 broken coffee pots in the basement.

I remember seeing them and having the thought flit across my mind that I needed to get rid of them because he'd screw things up with them. There's still this reserve I have over "managing" my parents possessions. I've hated to just barge in and throw their old personal possessions away. Let me say, I'm over that reserve. It was a problem with my mother and her dentures - she kept using the old ones instead of the new ones. I finally had to throw away the old ones. Now it's a MAJOR problem because Joe has put his working hearing aids somewhere and replaced them with old broken ones.

Intuition and paranoia make me think he threw the new ones away. There may be a saving grace somewhere, and we may find them eventually, but I fear not. On Sunday night, I asked him not to take the trash bin out to the street because it really wasn't full. Sunday evening and Monday morning both, he was futzing around in his closet and his drawers. Do you watch every single thing they do? Well, yes, you should. Because when I looked out at the street, there was the trash bin for the garbage pick up. His working hearing aids are missing.

I've looked in every single drawer in his den and bedroom. I've checked every single pocket in every pair of pants. The only place they could be is outside in his workshop. I discovered this too late to check out there today. I'll check tomorrow.

I kept asking him to find them this evening. The reason is that he may find them in the place where the old ones were, which I really can't remember. But he got wrapped up in finding coins he's squirreled away in every drawer he has. Screw the coins; find the hearing aids.

It's been amazing, however, what he's heard without a hearing aid stuck in his ear. Especially when he doesn't have a clue whether or not he has it turned on or off.

The main question you have left is:  What is with a person that cannot tell the difference between hearing aids that work and ones that don't and will replace working ones with ones that are dead?