The Trials and Tricks of Memory

Short-term memory loss can be a horrendous pain in the ass that most of us, young and old, have endured. It gets worse as you age. I’ve written about this before, but it’s usually been in a partial, piecemeal way. I’ll give it another shot, while using some of my more brilliant former insights into how memory works―or breaks down for old people, as it did for Joe Biden.

I first explored this four years ago in a blog called “The Forgotten Zucchini”: Going to the supermarket to buy ingredients for a zucchini dish, I became distracted in collecting unrelated things and walked right by “those nice bulbous green zucchinis” just waiting for me. . . . You “don’t realize the omission until you get home, cursing and flailing your poor memory” for overlooking the very thing you came to buy.

In “A Slight Loss of Control,” I tried to make a little more sense of short-term memory loss:

Myself and many friends have experienced loss of short-term memory. You know, forgetting your keys, the last name of a friend, where you put something. This is so common that it’s unremarkable. Yet it upsets a lot of us.

[A friend described to me going to a room to fetch something and forgetting why he was there. I’ve done that.]

Often when you’re trying to recover a forgotten name it will come back to you a few moments later while you are thinking of something else. So your memory is still functional; it’s just taking its time to sift through all those long-unused cells in the mental library.

Yet memory can work in wonderful ways. À-propos of some connection, the lyrics of a 70-year-old pop song spring to mind. The lovely appearance of a high-school girlfriend you brought to a dance emerges in detail. The taste of bacon and toast when you were 10 years old eating breakfast comes to life like Proust’s madeleine.

About a year ago, I came up with this:

In our later years, memory often becomes the source of much pleasure, contemplation and resurgent knowledge. This is not a withdrawal into the past. One’s memories can enrich the present and permit you to detach from matters that have less meaning in your new life.

It takes one a long time to recognize the value of memory and how it inevitably informs our old age. There is no history without memory. Elie Weisel said it best: “Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.”

Older people have the luxury of memories, not just to escape the present chaos but to give us context for what we’re now living through. Better to be old these days than to be young.