AMONG THE MANY TROPES associated with aging is the idea that as we get older, forgetfulness inevitably arises. You can’t find your keys or your phone. You can’t recall what you had for breakfast. Your next-door neighbor’s name disappears. Your memory, so it goes, has become porous.

(Illustration by Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)

Of course, we have been forgetting things for our entire lives but as we come into our Golden Years, we forget that fact. Instead, each lapse of memory takes on a new and troubling meaning. Searching the house for the glasses that are on your head the whole time is not a sign of distraction or focus; it is early Alzheimer’s. And if you go to introduce your co-worker and colleague Daphne to your daughter, and Daphne’s name eludes your attempt to summon it from the depths, dementia is coming for you. Maybe it is already here.

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Joe Dworetzky is a second career journalist. He practiced law in Philadelphia for more than 35 years, representing private and governmental clients in commercial litigation and insolvency proceedings. Joe served as City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia under Mayor Ed Rendell and from 2009 to 2013 was one of five members of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission with responsibility for managing the city’s 250 public schools. He moved to San Francisco in 2011 and began writing fiction and pursuing a lifelong interest in editorial cartooning. Joe earned a Master’s in Journalism from Stanford University in 2020. He covers Legal Affairs and writes long form Investigative stories. His occasional cartooning can be seen in Bay Area Sketchbook. Joe encourages readers to email him story ideas and leads at joe.dworetzky@baycitynews.com.