Recollections about memories..

Once again I found myself thrown down the memory road this evening.

My friend Nina and I finally got together for dinner. Joining us were Nina’s mom and her husband. Nina’s mother remembered a concert that she and I attended some time when I was in high school. She says it was a local symphony concert of one of Mahler’s symphonies. She remembers us being dressed up and heads turning as we walked in, a young high school boy with a middle age woman on his arm. I kinda remember this but beyond a faint memory there is nothing else there. That brain cell is long gone. Funny how that end of memory can be as fractured as the parts that you remember.

Back at Christmas time, my family and I were watching videos of past Christmases and we reached one from the Christmas right after my parents had renovated their house and my grandmother had died. I sat there amazed as I saw myself on the TV screen and had NO memory of having been through the actions I was watching.

I suppose in many ways that the feeling of non I felt might be like those felt by people with dementia or Alzheimer’s who know that they are slipping away. I just hope that if these horrible diseases are in my future that I am one of the lucky ones who have no idea I am sick and just exist moment to moment.