I’ve
spent a fair amount of time with forgetful people. Between aging relatives, and
relative aging, I am learning about if first-hand. Add to that the time I spend singing in
nursing homes, Alzheimer’s units and assisted living facilities. It all clusters in a pile of charming and
not-too-terribly-charming stories that are told and retold… and retold
again.
I
have fond memories of visiting my aging aunts.
My Aunt Ruth, in her mid-nineties, decided to sing her conversations. You’d ask a question, and she would respond
with melody attached to her words. She
had a little ditty that my sisters and I still use one a regular basis. She’d sing
“I
used to could, I used to could re-mem-ber.
But now I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” The tune was similar to the melody of Come
Back to Sorrento.
My Aunt
Mae is a great storyteller, so the lilt in her voice, and her animated delivery
make more pleasant the repetition of the story about how she gave her car to
her granddaughter Krishna, because it wasn’t wise for her to drive
anymore. I started thinking about it as
a song, her story about not driving anymore.
We all listen to pleasant songs over and over.
All
of our aunts, and our beloved mother, remembered word for word each stanza of
great poetry. Poems memorized, and ones
written by the women themselves. Poems,
and songs must deal themselves to our brains, because I have found this to be
standard fare among residents at nursing homes.
They can recite poetry and they sing along with me one the old
standards.
Some
people I love have deep seeded fears of losing their minds to
forgetfulness. I wish I could reassure
them that this is nothing to fear, but our fears are our fears, and it takes a
boatload of logic to try to talk us out of them. Truth is, we don’t really get to control much
of that.
There
are real benefits to forgetfulness. The poor sisters who straddle me on our
family tree have painful, ugly memories of our dad and the way he treated our
mom, and the way he treated us. I was
blessed to have forgotten much of it. To my sisters’ credit they don’t dredge
it all up to live over and over again.
Forgetfulness is bliss.
I
have a flawed memory mechanism in my brain. It can recall
vivid details about some things; random and meaningless details, and then I
outright forget major things -- like the fact that one of my closest friends had a heart
attack our senior year of high school, or that so-and-so had died … and I actually
sang at their funeral. I forget stuff like that. It’s really embarrassing.
One
of the interesting things about that flawed memory; i.e. forgetfulness, is that
the things I forget or remember are not determined by their weight of importance
or the measure of my love. I can love
someone very sincerely and deeply, and forget their birthday, or that they have
diabetes, or whatever.
I
think part of my memory issues stem from my ability to dream in vivid detail,
and to recall all those details after I awaken.
I carry dreams around with me all day sometimes, and continue them when
I go to sleep the next night. For
instance, this morning I awoke with a very clear memory of having been to the
library with some children I don’t know, where we worked on a craft project
together. I remember I wore a green
shirt and my brown Dansko sandals. There
was a fellow there in the library who was rather quiet, with a pleasant demeanor, and he was reading a
book over in a buttery leather chair by the bookshelves. He kept looking over at us. At some point when we were done crafting I
grabbed my gig bag and walked out, looking at a large poster in the lobby that
advertised a concert where I was headlining, singing the songs of Leonard Cohen. The man in the library, who by the way looked
rather like David Bowie, stood beside me and we struck up a friendly conversation. Turns out he was Leonard Cohen himself. I asked if he’d like to join me on stage…you
know, Leonard Cohen singing Leonard Cohen, with Cori Connors? Anyway, that
dream has been following me all day today.
So I wonder if the fine line between dreams and reality is extra thin
for me, and I can’t recall things because I don’t know if I dreamed them or if
they’re real, and they all sort of go to the same place in my memory bank. Ah, me.
I don’t
believe there is a soul alive, who had been blursed with a healthy body and
brain, who does not carry evenly weighted bundles of good and bad in their
lives. It seems to me it would be just
as good to forget as it is to remember.
I
hope…I mean really HOPE, my kids will forget some of their history with
me. I hope I forget some of my own
weaknesses that weigh me down in the category of self-worth. There is so much about forgetting that is
wonderful, I don’t know why we fear it.
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