Writing to remember

I hope it never happens to you,” Mom told me one day, out of the blue, “that you cannot remember.”

She was in her mid-seventies and was having trouble with her memory. She must have detected the impatience in my voice and my bearing as I watched her grappling with her growing memory loss. I admit I would get quite irritated when she fumbled and groped for words when she spoke.  She would start to tell a story but could not recall details. She would call me on the phone but would forget what she wanted to say. She wrestled with names, dates, places. She just could not remember anymore, and she hated it.

I hated it too. I could not stand seeing my proud, strong, will-do mother starting to lose some of her fabled powers. 

That was when she gave me her box of mementos, sweet letters she and Dad wrote one another during their courtship and through their marriage. She wanted me to have them, to keep and share with my siblings. It was as if she wanted to be sure she and my father would not be forgotten but forever remembered as a beautiful couple breathlessly and lavishly in love. And it was also when Mom started to talk about her Mother who died when she was 14 years old, and how she longed to be with her again.  Though with age, her mind was beginning to lose some detail, her heart would never forget.

These days, younger family members groan, roll their eyes or laugh when I make the same mistakes my mother did. The future I feared is slowly creeping in. But it is a consolation knowing I’m not alone. A reunion with old classmates can be a hilarious adventure in la-la land as we strive to recall the who, what, why, where, when and how of our school days.

The thought of forgetfulness always frightened me.  I saw early signs of it in my Mom when I was growing up.  It was funny then, but not now, when I see myself in similar circumstances. After a meal, Mom and a visiting uncle would ask each other if they had already taken their memory pills. And sometimes, when Mom would call one of her ten children, she would start reciting our names from the top until she found the one she was looking for. She’d go, “Jesse, Ducky, Babsy, Tictac, Aping, Meiling… Meiling!”

Early on, I made it a habit to write everything down. Birthdays were listed in a perpetual calendar, to-do lists were prepared at the start of the week, and I never went to the grocery without a list.  I have kept a ledger for the past 40 years where I write down all the bills that must be paid monthly and when they are due. It is foolproof; I always pay on time. And, when it was still relevant, I even pasted on the inside of my wardrobe door, a chart of my fertility cycle.

But these days, I don’t even remember to look at the birthday calendar. I make my to-do list only when I’m panicking over a deadline.  And I generally leave grocery shopping to my daughter since I tend to buy too many items outside of the prepared list.

I watched ‘Rak of Aegis’ during its first run in June and enjoyed it thoroughly, but now I cannot, for the life of me, remember why.  When I watch movies I’ve already seen some years back, it is as if I am watching them for the first time.

I tend to run out of the right words when I talk so I try not to speak in public without a prepared script. I forget to return calls and emails. I always wonder if my yoga classes are on Wednesdays or Thursdays. And I keep having to ask the beauty parlor when my hair dresser’s day-off is. (It’s Tuesday.)  The other day, my sister had me brought home by her driver so I could give him something she needed. But when we got home I said thank you and sent him back – and remembered about the package only two hours later. 

I have trouble remembering my passwords so I keep them in a secure secret file. I still manage to get things done because I have learned to write everything down. I have note pads, loose sheets, and scraps of paper or used envelopes on my desk with scribbled notes and reminders. 

I write to remember, to catch up with the days that fly by too quickly. I’m still wondering where July went and here we are already in mid-August.  Events in the past ten years are jam-packed in my memory so it’s hard to tell what happened when.  Like mash-up music, I can hardly tell where one song ends and the next one begins.  There is just too much going on, too much noise, color and movement that compete for attention, causing visual, auditory, intellectual and emotional overload. 

The kids take to the over-stimulation quite naturally, but I grew up in a quieter, more discreet and gentler time and I have this need to unload a lot of the junk in my head, heart, eyes and ears, so I can focus on and relish the essentials. I switch off from the noise by doing yoga, solving crossword puzzles and playing solitaire. And I write about things that are too precious to forget.  

And so I write, to make sense of the confusion of time and space, to nail down my memories and preserve those my mother wanted me to keep, and put them all in order in my heart and my head.