Category: My Story

Fallible Memory

For most of my life I’ve kept a journal. Starting at age 12, when I had a “Dear Diary,” book, I started writing what seemed important in my life. I think they were meant for girls to write about their crushes on boys, but, being a serious child, I recorded my fears about the Cuban missile crisis.

I kept writing into my college years and after, although not regularly because I was busy with classes and then work. But now when I go back and read more than (sometime sporadic) 60 years of journal-keeping, I have to question my memory. Either I’ve forgotten much or I’ve gotten it wrong. What if I didn’t have this journal to remind me of what really happened, so that my memories would be selective, and I would remember only the good and not the bad—or vice versa?

Even my brothers and sisters (seven of us, total) have different recollections of events we experienced together—Christmas day, visiting grandparents, trips to the family cottage, where I only remember sunny days when clearly the summer weather in Wisconsin includes a lot of rainy days. But does it matter? Maybe being happy is more important.

My friend, Evelyn, 92, remembers very little, including her age, imagining that she’s sometime in her 60s. What she doesn’t remember she unknowingly makes up. When I visited her recently at her memory care place, she was sitting in front of an iPad that endlessly cycled through family photos. When I asked about the people in the photos, she told me stories that I know to be wrong. She told me her granddaughter’s name, which was close but not quite right.  She thought her son had two daughters when he only has one, and that those two daughters produced grandchildren who were lovely and smart. Do we make up stories that make us proud of our family?

She told me that the food in her nursing home was delicious and that she and her fellow residents just “gobbled it up,” and yet at our previous meeting she said she never went down for dinner, and that staff brought the food up. But how much more fun to imagine enjoying a tasty dinner with your fellow residents.

Her son, who lives a thousand miles away, calls her every day, she said. I have no doubt that he cares for her, but I doubt that Mark, who has a busy working life, calls every day. But isn’t it better to make up these loving stories than to complain that you never hear from your son and that your granddaughter is failing in school. I remember my mother made her life miserable because her children didn’t visit or call enough to satisfy her need for attention.

Maybe our memories reflect our personalities: is the glass half empty or half full? Maybe it’s better to make up memories when we’re not sure.

But Evelyn seems happy, lost in her world of successful granddaughters and a loving son. My father, too, didn’t seem bothered by his loss of memory. Starting in his 80s, he couldn’t remember the names of friends, relatives or the orders doled out by my mother: “Paul, I told you an hour ago to take out the garbage.”

Yet he maintained his joy in life. He loved gardening, but it wasn’t until his 90s that he stopped planting, because he realized he was forgetting to water the tomatoes and basil. Even with a bad memory, he could sing, play the piano and take part in an all-harmonica band until he had a stroke at 94. When he forgot that my mother told him that their granddaughter would be visiting later, he was delighted and surprised an hour later when she knocked on the door.

My dad, who loved ice cream, also loved talking to strangers we met on our walks, even if he couldn’t remember the conversation hours later. Can we still enjoy having ice cream if we can’t remember what we did the day before?

Is it necessary to remember correctly every aspect of our lives? What if we’re just happy, no matter what we remember? Are our delusions wrong? I don’t know, but I think about memory a lot, especially since mine seems to be gradually slipping. I remember a dentist telling me once he had “photographic” memory, but it didn’t make him happy because he could never erase incidents he would rather forget.

When Evelyn and I met, we talked for half hour, my old friend telling her own version of stories, while I listened and told her my own stories. Who knows what was accurate? We were just happy being with each other, old friends who worked together decades ago, remembering our favorite versions of our lives.

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Writing Our Own Eulogy

A friend died recently. I wasn’t able to attend her memorial service, but her sister sent me the eulogy, given by Sandy’s best friend. Or at least that’s what I assumed, as the eulogy was read by Anne, her life-long friend, and it referred to Sandy in the third person. Only later did I find out that Sandy had written the entire six pages. She had suffered from a terminal disease for decades and had been in Hospice for more than a year, so Sandy knew the end was coming and had plenty of time to craft how she wanted to be remembered. Or at least how she wanted to make a final statement about her life.

In the eulogy she enumerated her accomplishments—both big and small–including art director and teacher; waitress; woodworker; novelist; contractor and builder (she built her own cabin in the mountains). Spiritually, she started out as a Presbyterian, studied Buddhism and was drawn to the Quaker philosophy. There was so much I didn’t know about her, and I wish I had.

She chose one story to tell about herself: Before leaving on vacation, she covered her lilac bushes with netting to keep the deer from eating them. Unfortunately, a bull snake got stuck in the netting, but when Sandy returned she figured out a way to get the snake out without hurting it (and herself). The story showed her sense of humor, bravery and love of animals, but I wondered why she chose that one out of all the stories she could have shared with her family and friends after her death.

And it made me wonder which stories I would tell about myself, if I chose to write my own memorial. Out of everything that’s happened to me, would I choose something humorous that would entertain people, or some life lesson that I want to share with my family and friends? Which accomplishments would I list—learning how to kayak? My interview with a famous photographer? Becoming adept at meditating? Just like writing your memoir, writing your obituary makes you look back at your life—hopefully with pride but also a bit of wisdom.

Maybe one of the pleasures of writing your own obit is controlling the narrative, so you can imagine the looks on friends’ and families’ faces—either fondness, sadness or some combination– rather than not having any idea of how you’ll be portrayed.  It’s better than a random anecdote on one’s online memorial page. I can only imagine the stories someone, such as a neighbor, might post. I’m probably not the first person to talk to the animals in my yard but I rather not have my lasting memory be of the old lady who asked the birds if they wanted more seed or the squirrels how they liked the apple pieces I threw out of the window.

Sandy isn’t the first person I know who crafted their own eulogy. After my former neighbor died, I found his obituary in the local newsletter: “By reading these words, you’ve probably figured out that I’ve left this life and am headed to my next destination.”  Dan wrote about his childhood growing up on the family farm and what it meant to him, his work as a pharmacist, and the last few years of his life doing volunteer work, including at a shelter that cared for the homeless and where he donated his truck. He ended his piece in his characteristically folksy manner:

Well I could go on for a bit more, but, frankly, I’m really tired and ready to get outta here. Time to git ‘er done, if you know what I mean. Much love to all that I cared about and cared for me in return. Y’all have been great. You made my life good to the end.

What’s the best way to take a bow out from the world? Leave them laughing or crying?

One of the last sentences in Sandy’s obit was “If people say upon my death that I was essentially kind, then I’ve lived a good life.”

That seems like not much to ask for. May we all be so modest in our obituaries.

8

Technology Is Not My Friend

Sure, the Internet has a lot of benefits, but when you’re as technology-illiterate as I am, a simple email can cause a crisis. I recently got notice that my blogging service (if that’s the right term) was shutting down at the end of the month. I panicked because if I didn’t retrieve my 450 posts, they would be lost forever, and I had no idea how to save them.

Fortunately, I found someone who could help me save those precious posts, but now I’m struggling with setting up a new blog on a new service. It’s like learning a foreign language. The new blog pages are filled with strange symbols and words I don’t recognize. As my memory has deteriorated and as technology has gotten more complex, I’ve started to feel increasingly helpless. It’s not a good feeling.

I know that younger people are completely comfortable with technology. Maybe for that reason, it’s hard to find tech people who can help. Only we older ones need assistance. And when I do find guidance, I find that my language doesn’t match theirs; we’re using different phrases to describe the same thing, so I flounder, use long explanations to match their one word: “that thing where you start out and then after that you go to the next page. . . .”

Of course, I don’t know what I’d do without the Internet. Google has helped me translate my doctor’s medical terminology into something I can understand. When I need to research butterflies’ life cycle or how salamanders in a nearby lake survive in winter, the answer is at my fingertips rather than going through numerous books. What’s the number of annual visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park? Without the Internet, retrieving this information would take many phone calls, trying to find the right person, and many hours.

I’ve tried to keep up with the Internet, but as soon as I learn one new feature, another one comes along. It took me a long time to figure out what emojis signified and then to start using them. One I use frequently is the thumbs up, but I just read that younger people use this sarcastically, so now I’m worried that the thumbs up I recently sent my neighbor in an enthusiastic gesture will be misinterpreted.

I notice the withering look from the young checker at the supermarket when I take too long to figure out how to pay for my groceries. Where do I tap the bird emblem? Does it go up or down? I know I’m not the only older person who struggles with technology. AARP offers computer help, my hometown senior center has classes, and customers at the local Geek Squad are mostly seniors who need help getting their computers working. My cell phone provider, the one aimed at seniors, has customer service staff who talk kindly and slowly without condescension when I call with another stupid question.

Sure, there are seniors who can figure out the Internet with no problem, just like there are people in their 90s who still climb mountains. But I still print out my boarding pass because I’m haven’t yet set up the “wallet” on my cell phone.

Maybe it’s all relative. I think of my mother who, in her 80s, was given an iPad to play with and explore the Internet, maybe send some emails. But she was happy just to play Solitaire on her computer. That’s as high tech as she wanted to get.

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