Remembering….and Not

In her later years, my mother always kept a steno notebook and pen at hand to write down things she wanted to remember. Names and phone numbers, To Do lists, notes from conversations she had, notes to herself. I still have those notebooks and they are, in some ways, a testament to the aging process.  As the years went by, there’s a repetition in evidence that reveals the extent to which she wasn’t retaining things. A phone number repeated on several pages. The same note to herself set down again and again.

I thought of this today when my neighbor brought over her grandson’s pet fish and asked me to feed it while they were away. I repeated her instructions–five pellets of fish food a day–several times to fix it in my mind and then, without thinking, I wrote in the small notebook by my computer: “Feed Bubba, the fish, five pellets a day.”

I realized with a start that I have started to do this a lot.  It’s become almost an instinctual thing: when I know I’ll need to remember something, I’ll write it down. I’m almost, but not quite at the point, where if I haven’t written it down, I’m insecure about whether I’ll remember or not.  Is this another way in which I’m becoming my mother? Is this how memory goes?

The other day while driving back from LA, a light rain started to fall.  I went to switch the intermittent windshield wipers on and stopped short–I couldn’t remember how to do it.  I was caught between consciously knowing the actions to take and unconsciously letting muscle memory do it.  That was a disconcerting place to be.

After my aneurysm, I knew how my mental acuity was diminished, even if it wasn’t clear to others.  If you aren’t in my head, you don’t know the fully formed thoughts and sentences that I’m full of, yet can’t articulate. Imagine a cartoon panel: in the first cel, the girl has thought bubbles stuffed full of words and ideas; in the second cel, there is a speech bubble coming from her mouth and it is empty except for the odd word or expression.  At times, I’ll start off confidently to express something and in the middle of a sentence the next word just disappears. I’ll grope for it, but not a remnant remains. If you’re with me, I might try to get you to fill in the blank for me, and we’ll play a futile game of charades.

For a long time, it shocked me every time this happened.  Imagine, if you will, that you get up to walk across the room and suddenly find your legs collapsing beneath you, leaving you splayed on the floor.  I’ve learned over time to simply not even try to express what I’m thinking, especially in the evening, when I’m tired. I’ve become a lot quieter in a group (much to the relief of some, I expect) simply because I can’t get what I’m thinking out my mouth. It’s changed my confidence in myself and altered what I can and cannot do.

This is not a matter of forgetting what I had to say, and it annoys me when people try to console me with “Oh, that happens to me all the time. It’s just aging.” No, it’s just brain damage, a consequence of that burst vessel spraying my brain with blood. I deal with it, or don’t, as a badge of honor almost for being one of the rare individuals who recovered from a ruptured cerebral aneurysm more or less intact. The writing down of things, the forgetting how to turn on the windshield wipers–that, I fear, is aging, and I’m not so sanguine about it.

If this thing of getting older is looked at as a loss in the same way that a death is a loss, then I’m resistant to spending any time in the stages of Denial or Anger. It seems a waste of time and energy to me to bemoan the fact or the effects of growing older (just think of the alternative, as the joke goes). Similarly, I refuse to join in the pity party about how badly our culture treats the not-young. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ageism exists. As does sexism, racism, and all the other isms that are hallmarks of humanity.

Instead, I skip right along to Acceptance.  Hmmmm, isn’t this interesting I say to myself whenever I hit a marker of age that once seemed as far away as forever.  Hmmmm, isn’t it then (given the alternative, as the joke goes)?

Tagged as: aging, body image, brain damage, memory, midlife, midlife issues, ruptured cerebral aneurysm, tactics for remembering