The Ways We Remember

 

I was hired at CSULB under the presidency of Stephen Horn. He went on to become a Long Beach Congressman, and died on Feb 17, 2011, at age 79 from complications of Alzheimer’s Disease. Since then, I’ve followed news items on the disease, and watched a friend succumb and die from it.

     In a way, I’ve become obsessed with memory loss; I fret when I can’t remember names, titles of books and movies, and here have gathered my thoughts on the subject (before I forget).

     This essay looks at three ways of talking about memory: as identity, therapy, and epiphany. As identity memory faces skepticism that casts doubt on whether a particular memory did take place. As therapy, its effectiveness will also be called to question; how does it deal with memory loss caused by dementia? And as epiphany, its insight or revelation will also be questioned; is it “truth"? Such is the nature of discourse on a topic that has many sides — positive and negative — and makes debate possible and interesting.

     Do men and women differ in how they remember things? Perhaps, it isn't a difference of gender but upbringing — the circumstances of one’s birth, its place and time, and growing up to adulthood.

     Memory is the process of taking in information from the world around us, processing it, storing it, and later recalling that information, sometimes many years later. Human memory is often likened to that of a computer memory system or a filing cabinet. Memory is essential to our everyday conduct — waking up on time to prepare for work, gathering documents needed at work, checking that the car has enough fuel, etc. Our everyday memory is essential to our self-knowledge. We know what we remember and act on them.

     Families share memories at mealtime, in a gathering of members and relatives; these interactions create family memories. They reside in a country that defines their identity and ethnicity — different groups of people that constitute its citizenry. Thus, the Philippines is distinct from Vietnam and the United States distinct from the European Union.

     As we grow older, we often have difficulty remembering short-term, but not long-term memories that happened a long time ago. This is often regarded as the onset of dementia that impairs the ability to remember, think, or make decisions. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia.

     People with dementia often experience memory loss caused by damage to the brain, and this damage can affect areas of the brain involved in creating and retrieving memories. For a person with dementia, memory problems will become more persistent and will begin to affect everyday life.

     Experts prescribe exercises that stave off dementia, e.g., playing word games (crossword puzzles and Wordle), indulging in sports that require unusual skills. I read about a man who solved the Rubik’s Cube, after four tries, while parachuting from a plane. Another sailed down a river on a hollowed giant pumpkin. I recall former President George H. W. Bush, who did not have dementia, skydiving on his 90th birthday. It’s of course a question whether playing cognitive games and indulging in extreme sports help; there’s still genetics to consider

     Memory as identity and as therapy are two ways of talking about it. I base the idea of memory as epiphany on a trope used by Coleridge and Wordsworth. Epiphany is defined as a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something. Both use the trope of “memory within memory.” In Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight,” the speaker recalls a dream of a boy at school dreaming of his “sweet birthplace” — an instance of a dream within a dream.

     The poem, whose full title is “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” makes explicit Wordsworth's belief that life on earth is a dim shadow of an earlier, purer existence, dimly recalled in childhood and then forgotten in the process of growing up.

     In a letter to his friend Catherine Clarkson the poet explained that, the poem rests entirely upon two recollections of childhood, one that of a splendor in the objects of sense which is passed away, and the other an indisposition to bend to the law of death as applying to our own case. In other words, the older man recalls what he as a child used to remember — his celestial origin. Does a poetic epiphany lead to a religious belief?

     Here is a poetic epiphany from Tennyson’s dramatic monologue “Ulysses” that dazzles as well as chasten:

 

     “I am a part of all that I have met;

     Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

     Gleams that untraveled world whose margins fades forever

     Forever and ever when I move.”

 

     The epiphany doesn’t lead to religious faith but exhortation: 

 

     “Though much is taken, much abides; and though

     We are not now which in old days

     Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,

     One equal temper of heroic hearts, 

     Made weaker by time and fate, but stronger in will

     To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

 

     Thanks for reading. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy Memories in the coming New Year!

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