“There are so many things one would like to preserve with words but which are forever lost.”
Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins (1954)
Just like a coin has two sides, so is the word “watering” in this context. One is the washing away; the other is all about nurturing.
In the process of aging, the watering of memories is much more involved because of the threat of that dreaded disease – Alzheimer. In his article “Taking up my grandmother’s fight” for the June 20, 2020 edition of the Toronto Star, Kofi Hope wrote: “Alzheimer is such a terrible condition because it strips the memories that form the basis of who we are. As horrible as it sounds, sometimes I would look at my grandmother sitting there in the home, with a blank look on her face, the intelligence and wit she was known for dimmed from her eyes, and think for a moment it will be a good thing for her to pass. To be freed from the prison her mind had become.”
Or in the words of Samuel Beckett in Waiting for Godot: “Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little.”
No old people want to lose their memories of the good and of the bad simply because they are their only companions to save them from the depressing moment of prolonged aloneness and loneliness. They cling to them like the sight and sound of a new day, telling them to enjoy life to the utmost in spite of its fading significance. What better way to do that than to remember and keep on remembering until they find someone who will unburden them the trouble of remembering. Hopefully, this someone will immortalize the narrative, either by telling the story to others or writing it down for permanence.
An example of such constant remembrance occurs at 11am on eleventh of November. Commonwealth countries, like Canada, pause for two minutes to remember their fallen soldiers of wars. It’s fittingly called Remembrance Day (sometimes known informally as Poppy Day). The veterans who are still alive are asked to tell their stories about the war they participated in. But their numbers are dwindling (unless there will be another big wars). Soon their stories will be lost in a distant future; then we will only be left with books and film documentaries.
Memories are fragile, especially to the aging population. They try to hang on to them in any way they can. And if they find some gaping holes to the remembering, they either stretch or imagine the narrative, thus making the facts closing in at the realm of falsehood. As Kathie Roiphe, in her book review of Kate Elizabeth Russell’s My Dark Vanessa, wrote: “We protect ourselves with memory. We lie to ourselves. We make things into what we can handle.”
So on and on, they keep recalling, they keep telling to whoever is willing to listen (to the point that no one is there to listen but themselves). And in frequent recalling and retelling, the embedded lies take the place of the truth. It is a sad and pathetic state, but who can blame them? “The worst part of holding the memories,” according to Lois Lowry in The Giver, “is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”
They live to tell a story, their stories. That’s how they find meaning to a rather ordinary existence. If they deny themselves with the little memories they have, then they might as well be dead. As Richard Holloway writes in his book Looking in the Distance: The Human Search for Meaning (2004): “I have been invaded by a terrible sense of ultimate meaninglessness. I have been engulfed by the void, made to look into the abyss of emptiness that life seems to be stretched upon.”
But when Alzheimer creeps in, not only are the memories shut down completely; relationships break down as well. In the movie Away from Her, based on the short story The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro, the character Fiona develops Alzheimer that forces Grant, her husband, to commit her to a nursing home. Once there, Fiona ignores Grant and initiates a relationship with Aubrey, also a patient. Grant thinks that Fiona is punishing him for his past extra-marital affairs. So he allows Fiona to freely indulge in whatever romantic relationship she is feeling with Aubrey.
In Lisa Genova’s book, Still Alice, however, we come to know the harrowing impact of the disease to Alice Howland and her family. The main character is a 50-year old Harvard professor who has been diagnosed with an early-onset of Alzheimer. When she informs her husband John and her three adult children, they feel the pain that someday Alice won’t know them. This is too much for Alice and she makes a pact with herself that once the burden is too much, she will end her life. To help her remember this promise, she makes a note in her computer where to find the pills and how to use them.
She starts actively speaking about Alzheimer while her mind is still able. In her keynote address to a conference, she says: “My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment. Some tomorrow soon, I’ll forget that I stood before you and gave this speech. But just because I’ll forget it some tomorrow doesn’t mean that I didn’t live every second of it today. I will forget today, but that doesn’t mean that today didn’t matter.” A few pages at the end of the book, Alice says to her husband, “I miss myself.” John feels heartbroken, too, but he simply responds, “I miss you too.”
Every story of forgetting is different. Every person affected will have different reactions. “I dread the nights,” Glenda Bockneck wrote for the Globe and Mail (“My husband has dementia, and I feel as trapped as he does” October 25, 2020), in describing her experience as the wife of a 94-year old man with dementia. “Preparation for bed is stressful. At times, he’ll say he’s too tired to brush his teeth or undress and becomes stubborn. Every night he wakes up two or three times to go to the bathroom. Usually he can manage on his own, but he wakes me. Do I fall back asleep? Maybe. My mind circles endlessly as my husband sleeps on. How did I get trapped in this living nightmare? Why me?”
And the ending as well is different. In some, the pain is difficult; in others, resignation and acceptance are ways to cope. There’s always a cost. To quote André Alexis: “Forgetting is an act that lays waste to so much; its accomplishment is horribly Pyrrhic.” Prolonged burden can lead to suicides. On the other hand, there is a greater love discovered, lasting and transcending. What better way to tell a beautiful story of the disease than the way it is depicted in The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. The movie with the same title is more telling, especially having Rachel McAdams play Allie Hamilton (that’s just me).
Debra Stark wrote a short story, Holding the Dog, as her entry in the Toronto Star Short Story Contest of 2020. Her story won her second place. The protagonist keeps postponing his consent by refusing to sign the form that will allow his wife, Grace, be admitted to a long term care because of her dementia. One night, the husband fell asleep in a chair after supper and Grace got out of the house. The police found her sleeping under a bleacher at three am. One time ago his father told him a lesson after they found his dog by the side of the road, dying slowly from a vehicle run-over. “When something unpleasant needs to be done, there’s no point dragging it out. If you wait, you start to think. Thinking doesn’t change things.”
Memories don’t change things, too, because they are from the past. Only today and tomorrow matter. But once you lose them, who you are vanishes as well. Your life, your story will be subject to intermittent moment of recalling and forgetting. Who would want to be in that confused state of mind?
“Before Alzheimer’s fully took hold,” Kofi Hope continued, “my own grandmother spent many years slipping into the disease relatively isolated in her apartment. We’ve created a society where loneliness and isolation are realities for so many of our elderly. We’re all just too busy, we’re all too caught up in making it in the economy.”
When we’re old and fragile, we rely so much on the kindness of others. But most of the time, even our own families don’t have the room in their hearts to take as in as part of their daily lives. They ship us to long-term care facilities to be paid, perhaps, with our pension income. When COVID-19 pandemic happened, most deaths in Canada occurred in these facilities. How the vulnerable members of our society could easily be discarded – perhaps a cleansing process to make room for the young?
Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, wrote: “Memory is many things. It is a call to resolve in us what simply will not go away.” What better way to preserve those memories than to have a pro-active life in spite of aging body. David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, described Joe Biden’s run as the oldest presidential candidate: “Today, being 77 doesn’t have to be a time of wrapping things up; it’s just the moment you’re in, still moving to something better.” Biden won and will be moving to a higher pedestal of power but will face the most challenging moment in his aging life, where there are so many complicated issues to solve and demands to satisfy.
We don’t have to be like Biden as we face the setting sun of our lives. But in this Final Act of our own, unique individual story, let’s wake up each day with a purpose and live the moment. Let’s actively exercise our mind through reading, doing puzzles, playing chess and mind games, yoga, learning new language or musical instruments, painting, and writing. Let’s nurture our mind and not allow it to wash away in permanent oblivion.