Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going. ~Tennessee Williams
What would we be without our memories? Good or not so good, we learn from our yesterdays and that knowledge prepares us for our tomorrows. We like recalling those happy times of when we were kids or when our kids were babies and toddlers.
I’ve been having some of those special memories today since my youngest son is having a birthday. So I can think back to when I first held him in my arms, to when he began to crawl and then walk. I remember his first day off to kindergarten and then on through all the other firsts for him in school and college. His wedding was a day to remember and then the grandchildren he and his wife gifted to me. So many precious and irreplaceable memories of him.
But even before I married and had kids, I have those good memories of growing up on the farm with my sisters. We had to work, but we also had some lazy days of summer where I could walk in the woods with my dogs or sit down and read or write a story as I dreamed about someday.
Losing all those memories would be tragic for me. It was tragic for my mother who began down a path to dementia when she entered her nineties. While I wished she had never suffered that memory loss, I can be thankful she didn’t have memory problems earlier as many do. I just heard about a friend’s daughter who has Alzheimer’s at age 60. I was watching a basketball show that talked about Pat Summit, the Tennessee women’s basketball coach who was diagnosed at age 60 and died at age 64 from Alzheimer’s disease.
You know all the things they say to do to exercise your brain. You can be sure that Pat Summit did many of those and stayed physically active and mentally engaged as she coached and yet the disease caught her.
My mother did the same. She read books. She worked puzzles. She played cards. She stayed socially active. She got hearing aides when her hearing went bad. She had family to love and who loved her. But her memory still deserted her and left her floating in time while her memories fragmented and became mixed with imagined things that never happened. Her last years, instead of being good times to rest and remember her life, became a journey through sorrow.
Once you’ve walked with someone along that dementia road, the one thing you know is that you don’t want your loved ones to have to walk the same road with you. So, we are ready to find ways to do that brain exercise to at least delay the memory loss. Forever, if we can.
Online, I came across a post by an 81-year-old brain doctor with his seven rules for keeping your memory. I’m going to share a couple of his “rules,” but here’s the link if you would like to read his entire post.
His number one rule made me as a writer happy and me as a reader happy. Choose fiction to read if you can. He says nonfiction is good, but reading fiction requires you to exercise your memory since you are starting at the beginning of the novel and reading on to end while your brain retains a variety of details, characters and plots in order to keep up with the story. I’m more than ready for that kind of brain exercise.
Of course, my mom did read all the time. But it could be that reading so much was what delayed her dementia until she was ninety. The doctor also said that he had noted that one of the first signs of dementia was when former avid readers stopped reading. Mom did lose the ability to keep that story in her head. She did still try to read my books, but sometimes it was the first few pages over and over.
His second rule was to never leave an art museum without testing your memory. You don’t have to go to an art museum to do this. What he’s suggeting is a kind of concentration game. You may have at some time in the past been to a baby shower or wedding shower where they took a tray of items around to let you look at it and then took the tray away while you were supposed to write down what you remembered being on the tray.
I do something similar when I do my Sunday Morning Coming Down walk and share it with my Facebook friends. Each Sunday morning I take the dogs out for their early morning walk while I try to pay special attention to what I’m seeing, hearing, and feeling. Then when I get back to the house, I do a FB post recalling the walk. Sometimes I don’t remember some of the things I saw or heard even though, at the time, I had every intention of including whatever it was in the post. I do remember later that I neglected to include this or that. So at least I remember I forgot. That’s an important thing to remember.
We can play the art museum concentration game without going to a museum although going to a museum would definitely be a good memory booster. If you want to give it a try, just take another look at the picture up at the top of this post. This is the fancy parlor in an old house I got to tour several years ago in Charleston, SC. The room is beautiful with plenty of things to remember. So, once you’ve studied it a moment, then scroll down to the comments and see if you can list six or more of the things in the picture.
Brains need exercise, but if this exercise is more than you want to do, you can always just go pick up that book you’re reading and exercise away.
What other tricks or “rules” would you suggest for keeping your memory as “sharp as a whip” as the doctor says?
Comments 14
2 couches, a chandelier, 4 pictures on the wall, a fireplace, a small stack of books on a table, 2 lamps sitting on 2 tables, a vase of flowers sitting on a table, small objects on tables with lamps, mirror.
My sister-in-law does the crossword puzzle in the newspaper everyday, which is good for her and she plays games on her computer and tablet. She also reads books. She has 3 people she drives back and forth to doctors appointments. She is 84 or 85 years old with a few health problems but not memory wise.
Author
It sounds as if your sister-in-law is making the most of the years the Lord is giving her. That’s the way to live, Connie.
And you aced the memory test. So, way to go. 🙂
Chandelier, vase of flowers, pictures on the walls, matching sofas, fireplace, glass vases or something else glass on each end of the fireplace, matching statues between glass vases on fireplace.
I like to read and love puzzles. I watch Wheel of Fortune to solve puzzles there too.
Author
You found a few of the things that others hadn’t mentioned yet, Pamela. The glass vases on the mantel and those little dogs, (I think) that look to me to be actually hanging on the wall below the mirror. It’s interesting what jumps out at us and what impresses us enough to remember.
Large chandelier, mirror behind chandelier, 3 pictures, 2 lamps, flowers in a vase, 2 love seats, books, fireplace.
I play a lot of word games and read.
Author
I love word games too, Ann, and of course reading any chance I get. You did some good concentrated remembering there.
Vases with flowers, chandelier, round table, two small tables each with books and vases, already mentioned, two sofas, fireplace………maybe in my imagination???
Author
No, Karen, definitely a fireplace. In those old houses, there is usually a fireplace in every room and they had servants to keep those fires going.
Chandelier, Fireplace, 2 blue sofas, orchids in unique vase, Mirror with beautiful frame, 2 pictures to left of fireplace, book and white vase on table to left of fireplace, reddish orange walls
Author
You remembered a lot of that picture, Pamela. Only a few people have mentioned the books so far. I wouldn’t have thought to describe the wall color, but that is something to remember too.
I saw two blue chairs, pictures on each side of the fire place, an elaborate chandiler, beautiful vase, red walls and s lot more. I also read a lot, going through old journals I wrote has sure brought back a lot of happy times that I hope I never forget.
Author
Journal writing is great for retrieving those memories that aren’t actually forgotten, just stored out of reach until something brings them back to the surface, Donna Jean. I started journal writing when I was 13, but some of those journal entries would probably embarrass me now. 🙂
Mirror, chandelier, flowers, elaborate vase, matching sofas, similar size pictures but of different scenes on either side over fireplace.
Author
Neat that you noted the different scenes in the pictures, Birdie. Good eye.