BS: Memory: Quirks, Strengths, Frailties

Subject: BS: Memory: Quirks, Strengths, Frailties
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Jul 10 - 05:35 PM

Yesterday I had a great time at an Alaska backyard potluck/music party. As everyone did, I think, until our hostess got a phone call that her mother in Missouri had just died.

My memory will say that I had a great time there, her memory will remind her that this was the year and day when her mother died. Our memories will be totally different.

Some years ago a musician friend of mine developed a bleeding aneurysm. He survived it and he is still a sweet, talented man (if a banjo player *g*) – but his short term memory is gone. He not only cannot tell you what he had for dinner, he also is not sure if he had dinner.

I read somewhere that the way to ensure a happy old age is a bad memory. Facetiousness aside, would that be literally true? I suspect that memory is what makes us.

Subject: RE: BS: Memory: Quirks, Strengths, Frailties
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 Jul 10 - 08:06 PM

It's even more fun growing old together.

She of course, has terribly deficient short term memory, and can rarely remember anything I say to her.

I on the other hand (according to her) have the possibly unique ability to remember thousands of things that never happened.

It would make for interesting conversation if either of us could remember what joke we were telling by the time we get to the punch line.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Memory: Quirks, Strengths, Frailties
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Jul 10 - 08:12 PM

Same here, John...

The P-Vine doesn't remember stuff that we did 5 years ago... I mean, places we went???

I remember them and she accuses me of makin' the stuff up???

I donno???

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Memory: Quirks, Strengths, Frailties
From: Smokey.
Date: 05 Jul 10 - 08:58 PM

Three things happen when you get old:

First, your memory goes.

Subject: RE: BS: Memory: Quirks, Strengths, Frailties
From: Amos
Date: 05 Jul 10 - 10:01 PM

The memories are an independent variable from the pinions and restimulations they get connected to.

One of the factors of declining memory--not the only one for sure--is the accu,ulation of areas to avoid as one goes through the bumps of living.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Memory: Quirks, Strengths, Frailties
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 05 Jul 10 - 10:03 PM

Ms Sunset Coast and I are going take a five week course at UCLA, Senior Memory Training, beginning this week. We may forget the the first thing to go, but we're going to fight like hell to keep it from going so that we won't forget the second thing to go.

Subject: RE: BS: Memory: Quirks, Strengths, Frailties
From: Janie
Date: 05 Jul 10 - 10:22 PM

You never know, Ebbie, what memories will turn into. When my sister died in 1991 some one sent a planter to the house filled with narcissus and hyacinth, two very fragrant blooms that are overpowering indoors, even when not associated with grief.    For years after that the fragrance of these two lovely flowers filled me with dread and grief, even in the garden. The last couple of years, however, I find they evoke welcomed remembrances, tinged with gentle sadness, of my beloved sister.

There is lots of interesting and informative research about memory available. Google "Oliver Sacks short term memory." A bunch of stuff comes up that is very accessible to the lay reader, too much to link to selectively, except, since this is a music site, I will link to Music Bridges the Abyss .

This case, Clive Wearing, is about total amnesia for his past, combined with absolute loss of short term memory. Except the well developed learning and capacity for music remains. Nothing else. Just the music, in the moment, from moment to moment.   When the moment is gone, the memory and the music is gone, and there is also an absence of long term memory.

Subject: RE: BS: Memory: Quirks, Strengths, Frailties
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Jul 10 - 11:18 PM

For me, too, memories are triggered by aromas. A lilac, for instance, brings up a day in 1952 in the mountains of Virginia.

Oliver Sacks makes one confusing statement at the end of the video excerpt. After describing Wearing's total loss of memory - sometimes with just 2 seconds gone by - and then he says that music makes him totally himself "as does being with his wife, Deborah". Is Sacks saying that Wearing didn't suffer amnesia when in the presence of his wife?

In the case of my friend, Geo's long-term memory is fine; I was very pleased upon his return from hospital in Seattle that he remembered me, that he had known me long enough to imprint me on his brain. Some of his other friends were not as fortunate; to this day 7 or 8 years later (not sure about the time frame) he doesn't so much as remember their names.

Recently a video of our band from the early 90s surfaced and it is amazing to me how different Geo's body language was before the aneurysm to what it is today. I could almost say that in those days he filled his body but not so much anymore.

Subject: RE: BS: Memory: Quirks, Strengths, Frailties
From: Janie
Date: 06 Jul 10 - 12:17 AM

I don't think so, Eb. My take, which may be incorrect, is that his wife is a constant and familiar, if not remembered, presence, who accepts him and the moment for what it is, without judgement, thus validating his worth and existence, and providing some sort of anchor. All of us, with or without memory of what happened 60 seconds ago, probably have the radar to pick up on the anxiety or non-acceptance of "what is" of others. When we are in a diminished state, for whatever reason, we can make use of that support from others when we lack the resources or reserves to bolster ourselves.

Wearing's condition is not entirely analogous to the circumstances of memory that prompted your thread. However, I know that my mother-in-law, who had Alzheimer's, was clearly more at ease and more "herself" around two trusted and familiar caregivers hired by my father-in-law during the intermediate stage of her disease and who were with her continuously over the course of her illness. Familiar, kind, validating and accepting as her dementia advanced, even though she did not appear to "know" them.

I know what genes I am probably loaded with. While some family members were remarkably "sharp" right up until they died of strokes in their late 90's, there is a significant history of multi-infarct dementia. Alzheimer's or combinations of the two, with both late and early onset. At only age 58, I am aware of my own diminished cognitive functioning beyond what I think may be normally expectable at my age, and suspect that I am experiencing very early prodromal signs and symptoms that suggest a relatively early onset of dementia, consistent with what hindsight told us about other family members.

I hope I'm wrong, but if I am not, so be it. I know I have family that will continue to love and respect and validate me, no matter what. Who could ask for more? I am who I am. Who I am may or may not be so visible as I age, experience MI's or major strokes, or otherwise lose cognitive abilities in one or more areas. My paternal grandmother was never aware or insightful about her loss of cognitive capacity and memory, and didn't worry about it. My grandfather, uncles and aunts, and to a lesser degree, my father, are aware and insightful.

I wanna be like grandma.

Subject: RE: BS: Memory: Quirks, Strengths, Frailties
From: LadyJean
Date: 06 Jul 10 - 12:47 AM

I have an eidetic memory.

You don't want one.

Yeah, I can still remember my locker number from the third grade. I can also remember the third grade teacher shaking me.

The high points of my Mom's last illness are all still there.

On the other hand, I remember vast quantities of poetry. Rhyme stays with me like nothing else. I still know my lines from "Our Town", nearly 40 years after I last said them. I once used the toilet at a friend's party and left the bathroom knowing a new, and really good, dirty limerick.

My Cousin John Caldwell, who lived to be 91, lost a fair amount of his short term memory as he aged. But he could remember things from when he was a boy, and things he'd heard when he was a boy, like stories of John Morgan's Ohio raid.
He could also remember when my sister and her partner showed up with all five of their horrible dogs. Though that was considerably more recent.

Subject: RE: BS: Memory: Quirks, Strengths, Frailties
From: Ebbie
Date: 06 Jul 10 - 02:39 AM

Janie, you are a remarkable woman. If it does happen in your life I think you will be just fine.

A woman I knew - although not well - told me that she and her doctor recognized incipient signs of early Alzheimer's and she promptly made her plans and put them into motion.

First, she sold her house in Juneau and moved back to Anchorage where all her long-time friends live; she wanted a strong support group. Then she started writing down every important thing she wanted to remember, whether it was the name of the first dog she had loved to where her bank information was. She said that she will continue to do that as long as she can remember to do it.

She wrote down poems that she has always loved - and the reasons for it.

She recorded herself in conversation and in recitations - as she said, she didn't want to forget how she used to sound.

And more. The neat part is that she was happy; her spirit was as vital as I had always known her to be.

(That was about 6 years ago. Two years ago she re-married.)