Our Precious Yet Fragile Memory

I was sitting in a neurology clinic recently when I saw a lady in her late-70s with a chief complain of memory problems. In fact, the complain came from her concerned husband who was also present to meet the consultant neurologist. The patient, a lady with some memory loss was quite unaware of her situation. According to her husband, she also struggled to recognize him at times! She had to be corrected by her husband many times throughout the consultation, only to her embarrassment. 

How much do we value our memory? Isn't it the one thing that glues together all our experience into a meaningful narrative, and gives meaning to our private lives?

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We forget a lot of things all the time - except the savants among us, of course. And yet there are things that get stored in our memory - intentionally or otherwise. Things that we want to remember, especially our achievements, memories of our loved ones, relevant knowledge to pass exams, etc are not the only ones that define our being. In fact, even memories that we try hard to forget like embarrassing moments and hateful things also make us who we are.

So what is it like to lose our memory? To the person who is losing all her memory, it will cause some confusion and distress, quite obviously. "Where am I? Who are you? ...Who am I?"

But there will be even more distress for the carer, and loved ones. On top of the trouble of looking after people with dementia, the fact that someone who once knew you really well could no longer recognize you would make you even more upset. 

Without realizing it, the sadness and pity that we feel when we find out that someone we care about is suffering from dementia - or any memory problems - actually comes from of our own insecurity facing the new reality that the other person no longer remembers us. We'd then ask ourselves, "Who else cares about me?"