I think that I’ve forgotten my share of useful facts. Mostly because they’ve been superseded by new stuff I’ve had to learn.
I forget stuff all the time. I forget to comb my hair before I leave for work. I forget where I put the car keys. I forget the names of people I met this morning, and I forget the faces of friends I haven’t seen in 20 years.
Sometimes words I want don’t jump to mind; I need to wait a few hours for the cobwebs to fall away.
Without my diary I wouldn’t remember half the jobs I am supposed to do next week. Even with a trusty organiser I’ve now booked myself to be in two different cities on the same day next month. I’ll have to tell a fib to one of my family; and we all know that a fibber has to have an excellent memory.
When I go to the grocer’s I take a written list; otherwise I come home with wrong purchases. So what’s new? I had to carry a written list when I ran to the corner shop aged ten; and when I lived with mates, aged 20; and in my thirties, when I was married. Today, in my 70s, if I don’t have a shopping list, I forget to buy tissues and toilet rolls that I need.
The most common trick the forgetting fairy plays is when I re-heat a cup of tea that’s gone cold, and ten minutes later I wander around the house looking for my cup, forgetting to look in the microwave oven.
But I have always forgotten such things, with little concern that I might have become abnormally absent-minded.
This ability of mine not to remember everything is nothing unique. There have always been normal people who get on the train with odd socks, or a with a dress tucked into knickers, because they forgot to check in the mirror.
Mostly I suspect failure to recall occurs because we get distracted, or because we are not sufficiently interested in routine tasks, of what we’re doing, and so, need to operate on auto-pilot.
Forgetfulness and distraction are a part of ordinary daily living.
I am told we can do exercise to help muscle-up our memories; there’s a game a memory training guru played, where he showed me a tray with 20 objects on it, and then I was expected to try and recall the items when the tray was removed. Most of these tricks really didn’t help in the long scheme of things.
Now, with hordes of drone-like baby boomers worried about growing old, they appear to have a deep fear of not only loosing skin elasticity, but they are being told they may, proabably, also lose an inevitable fight with Alzheimer’s. There’s a whole new industry in researching and caring for dementia patients.
Whereas in days of yore, relatives would simply lock grandma in a home and take her for a Sunday drive once a month, now the aged care industry organises sing-songs and knees-up for their bed-bound, foggy-minded oldies.
Despite the growing industry of care and research, there is no known cure, nor way of preventing, memory loss - yet. The best advice I’ve had in 70 years was from my grandmother, in days before the I-phone apps, who said if I had to remember something, to tie a knot of string around my finger. That would give me a clue that I had to remember something.
I believe they – the professional care support industry - mean well, and they believe they are essential to the welfare of oldies and their families, but a full house of empty-headed geriatrics is bread and butter to this industry. Every day, especially in Twitter, I see new research warning of an increase in memory loss. And demands for higher wages for helpers in the old folks home.
How can I know if my forgetfulness is unusual, a result of memory fading like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, or the onset of progressing senility and dementia.
Perhaps I am loosing my marbles and I am in their target ( what’s the word, I’ve forgotten, its on the tip of my tongue) – a yes, target demographic.
Despite all the proclaimed tests for early warnings of loss off mental facilities, if my grey cells die and memory fades, it will fade away imperceptibly, like hearing loss or receding hair lines. I probably won’t notice anything other than my frustration because the crossword puzzles seem to be getting harder to solve.
Perhaps there should be a dash of cold reality from the Aged Care industry. Reality about what the aging baby boomers, their parents and children can expect, without scaring them stupid. What is ordinary memory loss, and what is tragic debilitation.
I searched Google and other web search machines for answers. Incidentally, one of the suggestions from a serious scientist said that use of web search engines was likely to cause us to lose the power to remember; well they said that, centuries ago, about the evil of printed books, didn’t they. But I digress. In the search I found a useful web blog: geriatric care management , with advice to “Help Manage the Care of an Older Adult”. Assuming, of course, this is an adult who has passed over to another dimension, and needs help from family or the helping industry.
“Alzheimer’s is not forgetting your keys. It’s forgetting what your keys are for.”
This was an “Ah Ha” moment. Its OK, and normal, to forget where I put my keys.
If I am strapped to a chair, and fed mush, I probably won’t care what the keys are used for.
