Fourth Form of Madness

Well its been a long time between blogs. I figure why rush these things. I prefer to wait until a topic finds me – which is what has happened. Identity – what makes us….. well us?

Big topic. Are we defined by what we remember? This question was really brought home to me recently when I was staring into an ATM machine realising that I had forgotten my pin number. After using the same number for 3 years, one morning I simply woke up and had forgotten what the number was! I felt a part of me slip away. More sobering was that I realised that this could happen to any piece of information I had stored in my brain (please note I use the word brain really as an “x” in this sentence as I, like many, are still baffled by the mind/brain question).

I could wake up tomorrow and not remember that I have read The Sacred Canopy and all the contemplating I did around that text (this might be a good thing because the whole “Is there really a God question” can cause a lot of hardship to all involved :-)). I might forget that I love gin & tonics or even forget how to make them. I may not remember my addiction to “Lost” and therefore may cease to care who Kate ends up with. More tragically I might even forget the little girl that won a dance recite when she was 6 by being covered from head to toe in sequins and stomping around a stage to “The Flight of the Bumblebee”. These are poignant pieces of me, integral in the understanding of what makes me instead of say Jenny who lives two doors down from me.

My grandfather suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. My grandfather was in the later stages of the disease when he passed away. Although he did not have any recent memories of who he was and of who we were, he mentally was stuck in the days he spent in the army, at a war that he had fought in. All of us, my family, the nursing staff, his friends, were his army buddies and would find ourselves playing out various regular scenes with him when visiting. This was interesting as prior to Alzeheimer’s he never spoke of this time. I felt we were afforded an insight into this man, a window that lead to a deeper understanding of what he had been through and what had help to shape his values and beliefs. During this time I felt that I was seeing my grandfather for the first time through his most private unshared memories.

Had I not had this time with my grandfather I would have been baffled by his funeral. Unknown to all of us, he had organised his funerals many years before (actually he had organised 3 funerals, and I am not even trying to be funny here, when the disease took over he just kept forgetting that he had organised it and went on organising it with other companies until he went into a home. At his funeral he had requested The Last Post to be played – quite shocking to anyone that didn’t even know that he was even in a war. Standing there, with an Australian flag draped over his coffin and The Last Post being played with all its accompanying sorrow and solitude, I was overcome with emotion for my grandfather – a man that I only got to know after a disease had claimed all but these most harrowing memories.

Yet I can’t help to wonder why he retained these memories and no others? Was it because these were the most important memories, the most important piece of the puzzle of what made him….him? Alternatively, was it just the most horrible time that nothing, not even deterioriation of neurons and synatpic spaces can dull the memory? Was it just coincidence?

What I do know is that memories, if they are defining element of self, are tricky things. Memories don’t have to be shared. Therefore it is seldom obvious to the people around you who you are and what you are made up of. However, memories do have a way of becoming entwined with what you believe and value and therefore shape the “you” that you show to the people around you. Unfortunatley, what does happen is a lot gets lost in the translation between your memory and beliefs/values and how you act. People see you act a certain way and have beliefs about certain things but they don’t see the memories of events that shaped why you acted the way you do and why you believe what you do. Mostly we have each other “out of context” and yet continue to try and understand each other. So I guess your memories are poignant to who you are, to your self identity but a memory not shared does little to help other people identify who you are in the sense of understanding your values and beliefs. Therefore, we all, in a sense, see each other as “who we are not”.

Anyway that’s enough of my rantings for now. Hope you are all well. Take care.