Why We Forget. Really.

We hear it all the time. Someone forgets what he was supposed to buy at
the grocery store and picks up a dozen cans of Spaghetti-O’s and when he
gets home and his wife asks why, he says, “Oh. Guess I musta had one of
them senior moments.” Or someone else confuses the names of her dozen grandchildren
or forgets people’s names at a party. “Gee,” she says with a nervous laugh,
“I guess it must be early-onset Alzheimer’s.”

Don’t you believe it. Alzheimer’s is a dreadful, wretched disease that
eats our brain and spits it out in pieces. I remember when it hit my grandfather.
My grandparents had been married more than fifty years, and Grampa forgot
who his wife was. He called her “old woman.”




During the 1990s, I spent several months as a paid companion to a woman
named Fran. I’d known Fran “before.” She’d been a successful businesswoman.
When I started spending time with her, she was eighty-two years old…and
mentally about two. I took her for walks. I also read to her before I helped
her undress and put her to bed. We both got bored really fast with the
books (Erma Bombeck and romance novels) from the assisted living complex’s
library. I brought books from home. You know what she enjoyed listening
to? Jeeves and Wooster. A book of goddess stories. But she spent most of
her time in another world, arguing fast and furious with invisible people
from her childhood. At the time I was writing
Secret Lives, so I spent a lot of time listening to and watching
invisible people. Fran and I made a good pair. She’d have an occasional
moment of clarity (I could see it in her eyes), and I’d say, “Fran, this
is hard, isn’t it?” and she’d say, “Yes”—and go right back into her awful
world.




The
Long Beach Press-Telegram has two columns for ageing baby boomers,
one called “Successful Aging,” the other, “Senior Moments.” I read them
sometimes. I’m also on the
Alzheimer’s Association’s http://www.alz.org/about_us_about_us_...
email list. I’ve learned that Alzheimer’s is one of the top ten causes
of death today. That it’s the only disease we cannot prevent, slow down,
or cure. A few months ago, one of the columnists set out to distinguish
between normal aging and Alzheimer’s. Missing an occasional monthly credit
card payment is something we all do, whereas becoming totally unable to
manage a budget is a sign of Alzheimer’s. Forgetting what day it is once
in a while is normal; losing a whole week or month or season is Alzheimer’s.
Occasionally misplacing your car keys is normal, but misplacing your whole
house is Alzheimer’s. Not liking to cook anymore is normal; turning on
a burner and leaving it on all night is Alzheimer’s. Forgetting the occasional
name or word (“but it’s on the tip of my tongue”) is normal; being unable
to conduct a conversation is Alzheimer’s.

We all forget stuff. I edit books written by people as young as thirty.
My oldest author was a man aged ninety-two. Across the entire age range,
my authors make incorrect word choices and forget details like their characters’
names. That’s normal. Fortunately, I still have all my marbles and can
supply the correct word (or at least make a good guess) and scroll back
to find a character’s name when he or she first entered the plot. I can
usually unscramble plot complications that don’t make sense but which the
author forgot to straighten out.

But there are mornings when I wake up with a snatch of music or lyrics
(for example) in my head, and it takes all day for me to remember where
it came from. And I’ve never been good at remembering names. I have therefore
created a theory to explain this kind of memory loss. See if it works to
you.




You know those huge paper files that many offices still have? Go to any
doctor’s office, for example, and you’ll see row upon row of paper files.
The lives of hundreds of people. Now visualize a room filled with five-drawer
filing cabinets. Visualize every drawer in every one of those filing cabinets
stuffed with paper files—notes, agendas, memoranda, reports, summaries
of everything we ever saw on TV or in a movie, term papers and theses,
business and friendly letters, every song we ever heard, text messages
and voicemail…you name it, it’s there in drawers so full you can’t close
them anymore. That’s your head. As we age and see more and read more and
hear more, the little
daimon(the Greek word for the invisible presence that accompanies
us through our lives, a sort of talkative guardian angel) in our head is
taking notes on everything and putting the notes in our mental files. Everything
we do. Everything that happens to us every second of every day. Everyone
we meet. Everyone we talk or text to and what we tell them. The longer
we live, the more files pile up in our head. At some point, all those papers
burst out of their file drawers. At some point, we get papers all over
the floor of our head. It’s in stacks and the stacks fall over. As long
as we’re alive, that enormous collection of imaginary paper records of
our lives is flying, zooming, buzzing around in our heads.




So ask yourself…what were you supposed to stop and buy for supper tonight?
What are the names of all your neighbors/cousins/grandchildren? Where’s
that Visa bill you thought you paid already? When is your anniversary?
When is your best friend’s birthday? Where’s the receipt the plumber gave
you to give the landlord? Where is…? Where did you put…? When did…? Who
was…? (And it’s even more fun if you read as much history as I do.)




Get the idea? Take another look at that file room in your head. Even if
it’s a hard drive (or a cloud) instead of paper files, maybe your personal
search engine’s sick in bed with a cold. The word I want might be “on the
tip of my tongue,” but actually it’s somewhere in the piles of paper on
the floor of my brain. Yeah. That’s why I can’t immediately identify a
phrase from an Ira Gershwin lyric and why you keep using the wrong words
in your book or the memos you write. Give us enough time, and, yeah, we
can sift through all those mental files until we find what we almost have
in hand. So here’s what you can say to your spouse or friend the next time
you forget something: “Gimme a break. I’ve got all these files in here
[pointing to your head] to sift and search. My cloud turned into rain,
and my search engine is real tired. But I’ll get there. Just gimme a minute.
I’ll find it. Uhhh…what am I looking for again?” Uhhh, what am I supposed
to be writing or editing today? Your guess is as good as mine.