When Jason said “Tyler’s system,” he meant the plastic bins in the pantry and the color labels on the garage shelves. Tyler had apparently spent a Saturday reorganizing everything while I was visiting my sister in Rockford. I remembered coming home and noticing the laundry detergent moved lower because “it made more sense there,” but I didn’t think much about it at the time.
Over the next couple weeks I started noticing little things that didn’t belong to me anymore. Tyler had changed the password on the streaming apps because Jason could never remember them, except now I couldn’t log in either without asking. The grocery delivery app on Jason’s iPad already had Tyler’s address saved under emergency delivery backup. Somebody had even renamed our Wi-Fi network to “J&T Home Base” as a joke apparently, though nobody told me when that happened.
The weirdest part was how naturally everyone moved around it.
One night Jason asked Tyler whether “the nurse paperwork” had gone through yet while I was standing right there rinsing dishes. Tyler said, “Yeah, they just needed Mom’s birthdate again,” and neither of them explained what paperwork they meant.
I waited for one of them to include me in the conversation.
Neither did.
A few days later I stopped by the pharmacy after work because my refill text never came through. The woman at the counter typed my name, paused, then asked, “Are you still picking these up yourself?”
I said, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
She turned the monitor slightly away from me after that and printed a new authorization form instead. Tyler’s name was already listed under medication management contact.
The signature line underneath mine had already been filled out in blue ink.