Good Memory

Night Thoughts

I’ve been blessed – or is it cursed? – with at least the illusion of a good memory. Who knows if it really is good? The ability of us humans for DElusion never ceases to amaze. And on some points – especially all those memories from the distant age of childhood and youth, before I met my husband – I’m almost the last one still alive who could either verify or refute what I think I remember. But for most purposes, I think I can still remember most things, and certainly the important ones, vividly – though, admittedly, from my limited point of view.

But even if my memory is as spot-on as I think, there’s no telling how long it will last. Twice this week I’ve been slapped hard by the reality that it may not last, even as long as I do – which would be long enough, if only guaranteed. My midnight reveries (that’s what I’ve started calling those 2 AM, wide-awake worry hours – to make them at least sound less ominous) have focused on what “I” would mean (will mean) without memories.

I realize I’m not the first human to face this question. Amnesiacs must, and also those not yet at the end of a journey into Alzheimer’s. But when the instant comes that a thing – anything – is unavoidably about us, it takes on a previously unimagined urgency, for us. That terrifying instant as regards memory, or the loss of it, seems to have arrived this week for me. So now that it’s vividly, compellingly about ME, the topic has taken on a new importance, especially at 2 AM.

First, I heard back from an old friend – by now, my oldest who’s still alive, of 50-years standing. He’s older than me by seven or eight years, though that difference doesn’t seem nearly as great as it did back then. I sent one of my now rare emails to him, rare since we’ve lived far apart for decades, and haven’t shared much but memories through them, so don’t have much to share but memories now.

As a prelude to the question I really intended to ask, I asked how he was doing. And in his reply he told me: “… balance issues, and digestive stuff I’m being tested for, and my hearing aids are failing I think? Have had steroid shots in both knees which helped there.  Is there anything else wrong with me, aside from having a failing memory?”

So the usual catalog of physical complaints for us elders – differing in the particulars, the same in essence. But that last? “Failing memory?” Written in jest, I suspect, though not amusing for my troubled 2 AMs. Especially not since followed by the same news, written as new, that has filled out all our sparce emails for the past how many years? Suddenly I saw my elderly mother (and, by extension, me; I do it too), repeating the same stories on every visit through her last dozen years, never seeming to remember that she’d told them all so many times already – sometimes just minutes earlier. Not so much a loss of memory, I guess, as a retreat into it?

And then I reached out to the literary executor, so designated in the last will and testament, of a mutual poet friend. In the early days, when we were young, both still in the process of becoming the people we’d come to be, the poet and I exchanged letters over a decade.  She had an impact on my life that has continued with me into old age. I’ve been thinking about publishing those poet letters, so rich and full of beauty – along with the angst of youth. For such publication, I’d need the permission of her executor.

I expected to be told “Yes” (I hoped), or “No” (I feared). I didn’t expect to read: “I do not remember being any kind of legal executor nor likely to  anything  relevant … not able to help you.” True, it’s been 40 years, and things can slip the mind. But seeing a will through a two-year probate, and overseeing publication of a posthumous memorial volume, would seem significant (and for most of us, unusual) enough to NOT slip the mind, unless the mind has entered a frighteningly slippery slope.

It’s possible, of course, that the executor just doesn’t want my annoyance. I hope that’s it. But if that’s not it, if the memory of all that is gone, then a chunk of what made the person is gone with it.

Some say we should live in the present, and I sort of agree. But if a string of present moments is all there is, how can you build a person from them.

I’m all too prone to spend far too much of the far too little time I have in brooding about the past – and the future, though for present purposes I’ll focus on the past, since that’s the direction memory looks.

I know who I am, I think, largely because I can remember how I came to be the person I now am. No matter how good I think my memory is, the memories themselves are not all good ones. Thank goodness,  many are, but even those that aren’t had their part in building ME. And I’ve learned to live more or less comfortably with, or at least to accept, ME by now – not perfect (no, never will be), but tolerable, and how much preferable to many of the MEs I remember along the way to now. Though I guess I should run that by my husband for a fact-check before bragging.

But what if I couldn’t remember those MEs along the way? What if I had to start from scratch with each new moment? There’s so much work already that goes along with being old (OK, with every age, but for me now it’s the being-old age that’s front-of-mind), I doubt I’d have the strength, or courage, to face each moment raw that way, when it comes to personhood. Or that I’d want to – though I might surprise myself there, if I have only that, for now, unappealing alternative. (You know what I mean.)

I know – you don’t need to remind me – that this is another of those pointless worries that haunt insomniac nights – and days – since there’s nothing I can do to change it. Though working crosswords and popping Prevagen look more appealing with each forgotten name or date.

If the topic weren’t so real (twice in one week!) and frightening, I’d try to end this piece with a snappy quip. As it is, I’ll just remind us that I started by musing about my good memory – and a thousand words later, I still remember that beginning. Which is some comfort – for the present moment, at least.