Memories

Memory and the loss thereof may be the most tragic of all fates. Memories, after all, are the summary of our being. I realize that not all of our memories are accurate or in some cases may even be entirely manufactured unconsciously. They are what gives us shape, individuality. Maybe that shape or individuality is more flattering that true, but that’s how we see ourselves and believe us to be. In The Way We Were, Streisand sang that they were “misty water-colored memories of the way we were,” often made falsely softer or more pleasant when we thought of them. In the very old days, when we had only friends or relatives to help us find something our memories had lost, if those friends and relatives had all died ahead of us, we were stuck with only those facts we could remember. Your mind says, “Oh, who was that guy I used to love in the romantic movies back when I was young? What was his name? Oh, I can see his face but I can’t come up with a name.” We might then rely on a friend or relative to fish it out for us. No friend or relative? Then no fishing it out. “I used to know all the words to the popular songs when I was growing up. Now I can think of only a few of the titles, but almost none of the lyrics.” No friend or relative to sing something for us? Then the song no longer exists. More and more memories get flushed down Time’s commode. But that was then. Now we have search engines to find lost memories for us. Good old Google and its buddies. Just punch in one or two key words and bang, your new AI friend or relative will take you right to it. You’re not sure when a WWII battle took place? Just do a search and bang, there it is. There may even be in some distant future the technology to implant a tiny computer into our brains that will become our own search engine, storing for each of us most of the world’s knowledge, or at least giving us immediate access to it. It may also store in one of those clouds above all our experiences and memories. I’m not sure if such a thing would be good or bad. Lots of frightening and exciting possibilities there.

But back to memory today. I forget if I ever shared this poem with anyone. My good friend Anne Smith sent it to me a few years ago and I just discovered it again, momentarily lost among the million documents I’ve saved on my computer. It’s too good and too relevant to someone my age not to share it with others who may have been touched by a friend’s or relative’s dementia or Alzheimer’s. Billy Collins was appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003, and, according to one of many Google searches, is the modern equivalent of Robert Frost. Since I’m an ardent Frost fan, I think I may have to find more of Billy Collins’ poetry. But then, I may forget what it was I was looking for.

“Forgetfulness,” by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title, the plot

the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel

which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Here’s one about a daughter’s experience with her father’s dementia.

          “Falling Lessons: Erasure One” by Beth Copeland

My father steps into a field of lost
sensation, sunflowers, a yellow star.

He lives in the garden without maps.

My father dreams through
what he feels and believes is real.

He loses his memory, his flesh,
his child with seawater eyes.

He forgets the fog.

We forgot to speak and snow was falling
on blue mountains, a vein

of childhood, blood, and sorrow.

I walk into this memory when my thoughts
start falling into a funnel, when I’m failing

to love, falling into a freeze-frame
where time fades like the flurry

of furious wings. I fall.

          Aren’t those two nicely but sadly done? Reader, you may be too young to understand them, but somewhere down the road of your life, you may.