If I Had Alzheimer’s, What Would Be The Last Thing I’d Remember?
My only significant experience with Alzheimer’s Disease was my cousins’ grandmother, who developed it sometime in the early 80s.
When I saw her for the last time in 1989, she and I sat on matching bar stools while she discussed the mess of menstruation. It was this continuous loop about the blood and leaking maxipads and whether I was old enough to have started mine (I was 24).
I nodded, imagining what Steve Reich might have done with this sample.
Over the last couple of years I have been under a lot of stress, and I find myself forgetting things, often within an instant of thinking them. I know this isn’t unusual—if nothing else, I have way more stuff in my brain now than I did, say, at 14. And there seems to be an obsession about this forgetfulness, from video games designed to sharpen older minds to first-person descriptions in The New York Times to study after study touting coffee and exercise as crucial memory boosters.
Nevertheless, certain stories, anecdotes, phone numbers repeat in my brain continually, even as I forget why I am standing in my kitchen holding a crumpled plastic bag.
This has made me wonder: If I were to develop Alzheimer’s and my memories and sense of self started to peel away like so many layers of an onion (obvious metaphor, albeit fitting), which memories would be the last to remain? What would be my parallel to menstruation and bleeding?
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memory, memory token, Robyn Weisman, Alzheimer’s
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