Forgetfulness (Billy Collins) in the ICU

I am watching my mother-in-law fight through her confusion trying to understand what has happened to her and why she is in the intensive care unit.  She has lost a week of her life and no matter how many times we tell her what happened, she cannot hold the information; it leaks out every time, leaving her dazed, thirsty, frustrated, but no more knowledgeable.  She is improving, though, but I wonder what will come of this hole in her memory?  Will it always be there?  Is the information there somewhere, or is it truly gone, wiped from her life somehow by the ICU experience and the delirium it seems to create in people?  I've been thinking about forgetting, how things just slip away that we knew cold years before.  I'm trying not to judge, but just to observe it, just to think about what her experience right now must feel like for her. How terrifying her surroundings are if she doesn't understand them at all--lights that never go out, people running around, people dying, people being wheeled in, monitors beeping, lines in and out of multiple body parts....how overwhelming this most be, how much it demands patience from people least able to be patient.  I found a few poems to share that touch on this at least a little--well, the first one does.  the second one I just really like as what he is saying is exactly the opposite of what my mother-in-law is experiencing.  try these:

Forgetfulness (Billy Collins)

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

HOW TO BE A POET (Wendell Berry)
(to remind myself)
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill-more of each
than you have-inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
- WENDELL BERRY -