Wipeout Memories: What are you without them?
You are what your memories make you.
Memory is the word that implicates a plethora of emotions or feelings which turn Homo Sapiens into Humans. Emotions originate from memories which in turn are rooted in any type of relationship. Your perception of a person is based on the memories you have about the individual through which then, you designate a relationship to these memories with yourself. The memories you store and perceive about yourself in relation to the world around, form the skeleton of your identity or personality.
Suppose you meet someone on a street and the person smiles at you. Due to normal instinct or etiquette or just by default you smile back, yet keep wondering why the said person smiled at you because you seem to have no memory about him/her whatsoever. The face does not trigger any recollections in your memory. So you decide that he/she is just a stranger trying to get acquainted with you. But, can you be sure?
Now imagine one day you get up to find that you don’t seem to remember who you are. Or maybe when you go out of your room there are three other people sitting at the dining table who call out to come and have breakfast. But, the question that pops in your head is ‘Who are these people?’. They seem to know you, but all the faces around don’t seem to raise any emotions in you. It's simply because you don’t remember whether you love them, resent them, hate them, or just fought or argued with one of them. Nothing.
So, the million-dollar question/s at this point would be —
Who are they to me?
What am I to them?
How should I behave with them?
Is this my home or am I in their home?
Lastly, Who am I?
Hence in simple words, a person without memories is emotionally blind even though he/she is not physically blind. A physically blind person can live a normal life with the help of family, friends, treatments to regain eyesight, etc. A blind individual is still connected with his/her memories of the surroundings and people around him. He/she has an identity as a son, daughter, wife, husband, friend, employer, etc. But what is the identity of his/her Self for a person without memories?
Dementia: Natural and Un-natural
A patient with Alzheimer's will be the best candidate to value the worth or essentiality of memories. When an Alzheimer's patient loses his/her memories about a person, he/she forgets the relationship as well, of the person.
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks depicts this tragic fact poignantly through Allie Hamilton the Alzheimer patient who has forgotten her family and the helpless yet relentless pursuit of Noah Calhoun for their 49th wedding anniversary.
The character of Mrs. Anita Chatterjee in Himanjali Sankar’s Mrs.C Remembers is about an elderly homemaker wife of a wealthy influential advocate in Kolkata. The novel depicts how the relationship of a mother and daughter Sohini starts getting disrupted due to the loss of memory. Relationships may crack with the loos of memories of even tiny everyday things like names, ingredients in some favorite dish, a special childhood outing, etc.
The same applies to aged people in whom Dementia sets in. Can we be sure that one day we won’t be in the same shoes? Are we immune to the withering brain cells in our skull? What then?
Every aspect of our life is thus built on our memory and the absence of this one ingredient makes us a blank body, devoid of any emotion and relationship. Memory thus is the river that has to keep flowing to keep our humanity perennial.
September 21 is World Alzheimer’s Day. On this day people from all over the world converge to bring awareness to this disease of dementia and fight against its persistent stigma and the strife to find its cure.
We usually never bother to think of our brain which is the engine the runs our life while the heart provides the required fuel of oxygen through the blood to it. But must we not acknowledge the brain cells that form the archive of our whole existence?
Think what can happen when these cells of our memories of speech, of relationships, of feuds, of skills, of emotions, of functioning gradually burn away?
Morgan Freeman as Stuart plays the character of a person suffering from Dementia or Alzheimer in the last episode of the series called SOLOS. He so aptly asks Who are you, if you can’t remember who you are?
When his memories are restored through some futuristic technology by a visitor, Stuart’s character reiterates the essence of memory. He informs that you scream on lost paths for identity but you seem to be banned on every road you take. You scream I exist!! But you surely do not. The question is how to say? You need to remember the formation of words to say something. Without memories he says, there are no wishes, no mercy, no terror, no fury ….. Nothing.
Memory in Literature
Memory in literature is a nostalgic theme that gives credibility to any unseen past and also paves the way to the unknown future. Memory in literature envelops history, memoirs or autobiographies, travelogues and so much more.
Memories written down are more or less cathartic to some authors especially those with some traumatic experience or any other emotion of affluence too.
Many writers have admitted that putting down their memories and their inner feelings into words has a therapeutic effect better than the medical or psychological assistance they receive.
Similarly, Alzheimer's has been depicted through many characters in many novels and literary texts. Some of the most known books are listed at goodreads.com.
While the whole world is struggling to overcome the recent Pandemic, there are some lives that are totally silent, trapped in the fog of wiped-out memories.
A silent prayer to all those who are grappling for their non-existence even though they are physically existent. May our brain cells do not betray us anytime soon. Please join me in my sincere Dua.
Would love to have readers join this post and share any experience with any Alzheimer patient or just some incident where you fail to remember about someone you met but have vague feelings of deja vu. Your opinion on this post would be most welcome.
Life is Amazing with Books and Writers
Note: Text is in British English.
Dua means prayer
