Slipping, Sputtering and Aging

Our mental gearing sputters and slips as we age. Things get muddled. A skinny old lady I know confuses the words genealogist and gynecologist. Granted they’re similar---one looks up your history and one looks up your...

A long life history gets condensed. “It’s from that great little store in the mall,” my 88-year-old Mother in law says.  “We used to pop in there all the time!”  She hands me the battery charger and has me read the product logo---Radio Shack. I inform her that Radio Shack has gone the way of the dinosaur.  Age old events merge with events from last week.

Time-lines shrink so there is only what was and what is---and they connect. A vacation taken thirty years ago is recounted like it was last week. Last week’s adventures have dropped off the time-line altogether. Whatever grey matter tethers time to memory dissipates.  The belts slip maybe or connections misfire.

RAM is disrupted. Roughly 40 per cent of people over the age of 65 experience some form of memory loss. Oddly enough professionals say this isn’t an issue unless you don’t think it’s an issue.  Being cognizant of loss is good. 

“Unfortunately, in most cases, there are no obvious signs a timing belt is near death; it will just break.” For cars you replace the belt before it blows.  We just fray. Experts say routine helps.  An investment in life helps. Both body and brain strengthening exercises.  Then the last seconds; power doesn’t come, engine seizes, body stops with a jar as hitting a wall. Cam, crankshaft collapse. “Furthermore, men are afraid of a high place and terrors on the road…For man goes to his eternal home while mourners go about in the street.”

Memory, Retrieval And Story

“We don’t have memory problems, we have retrieval problems,” says a friend. There is something about having a child that prods memory. This week my daughter anguished over her pre-calc at a level that was painful for a father to watch. I flashed back to my childhood. I hated math. I had significant math anxiety. I remember crying because it made no sense to me yet I still had to produce.

Tonight the kid was working on Spanish homework via a computer program. As I let my mind wander (as I accessed the file marked ‘Spanish’) I remembered a song I enjoyed when I was in Taxco, Mexico. Thinking of the song brought back other memories of my trips to Mexico.

Memory is an interesting animal. One day late in my fathers’ struggle with Alzheimer’s he was recounting to me the loves he had over his life. He started fine but soon into the story I realized that he was combining elements of his early life with the current. As an example he told of a high school sweetheart of his and how their love didn’t last because he lost her on 9/11. The memories were there, just the ends threaded together without the middle.

I am hopeful that despite loss of RAM I am still able to retrieve memories and data as I age. Part of me suspects that my stories will be lost both to time and to access. That is one reason I blog. To set down the stories. The ‘cloud’ will remember long past my capability to do so.