As we grow older, memory begins to stagger and then to lose its grip. You’d think that we’d first forget our childhood. But it doesn’t work that way. The things of long ago remain locked in, but the events of yesterday, of an hour ago, of a minute ago become elusive. When I forget something, I have an excuse.
I say, “It’s not old age. I’ve had this problem all my life.”
A few examples will illustrate the reality of my leaky memory bank. When my third son was still in diapers, I took my car to the dealership for service. Even now, 40-odd years later, I remember taking a few minutes to tidy up the back of my little station wagon as I waited to get it serviced. The blue Buick parked beside me drove away just as I finished my task. It disappeared through the doorway, with a diaper bag riding on its trunk. I recognized it as a diaper bag, because it looked identical to ours. The car, with the hitchhiking bag, got away too quickly for me to warn the driver of his error.
The next day Anna said, “I can’t find the diaper bag. I thought I left it in the car, but it isn’t there. Do you have any idea where it might be?”
Then it struck me. While tidying up my car, I must have put our diaper bag on the Buick’s trunk, but hadn’t remembered doing so even when I watched it driving away. Feeling like an idiot, I truthfully said, “I don’t know where it is.” Who knows where it might have ended up.
A few years later, son number two accompanied me on a visit to a small college campus. He found lots to do and disappeared from sight as I took care of my business. Then I jumped into my car and drove away. Ten minutes later I realized I had forgotten him and raced back to find a crying son suffering from feelings of parental rejection. My short-term memory, didn’t improve with time.
When I took university courses as an adult student, I feared exams. I knew I had to get full marks on essays and class work, because my memory would fail me on exams. Too often I’d open an exam paper and say, “What’s this? When did we study this stuff?”
However, it makes me feel good when someone else has a memory failure in public. Our apartment overlooks the parking lot. Last week an SUV pulled in and a lady stepped out and entered the building. A short time later she exited carrying a laundry hamper and a bag of garbage. She put down the laundry, threw the garbage in the bin, got into her vehicle, and drove away being careful not to hit the laundry hamper. A moment later she locked up her brakes and returned for the laundry. A person who must remain nameless later told me the driver had looked at the abandoned laundry and, before driving past it, wondered why anyone would leave it.
Even perfect people can suffer memory loss. Shortly after Anna and I became engaged, she borrowed her father’s car for work, but forgot it and walked home. It shook me to think my bride-to-be had even a tiny flaw. In reality, I should feel better knowing most people have memory lapses.
We have had fun laughing about memory failure, but memory loss in older folk isn’t funny.
I’ll have some serious things to say about that next week.