I am not your old man, but if I were… I would tell you it is essential to remember. I know that sounds foolish, but memory can be very tricky. People forget names immediately and over time and people’s names are precious. I knew a woman who ran a coffee stand in a building next to my office. She would meet you and from first moment she would remember your name even if there were months between visits. It felt a bit uncanny, but it was also incredibly warming to be greeted by name, like “NORM” on Cheers when you came by for coffee or a sandwich. We hold our own names as critical and being acknowledged by another is gratifying. Again, I’ve no idea how this is accomplished, there are many that claim there are mind tricks to help but try.
However, it is all the other stuff I want to talk about – the loves in your life, anniversaries and birthdays, things you can keep track of on a calendar, the faces of your family, your friends, that glorious sunset at Haleakala or the perfect dinner when you proposed or told someone you loved them for the first time. “I wouldn’t forget those things,” you’ll say, but you will. They will lose their exactness in your memory. They will fuzz like a gauzed screen making an aging Gloria De Haviland look stunning if slightly out of focus. They will age, like you, become sepia toned and fade away. You must sharpen your memory always.
In the moment of matter stop, breathe, take it in through all your senses. Remember the level of the light, the smells of the surroundings whether nature or nurtured. What was your pulse rate? What was you breathing like? What was the outfit you were wearing or being worn by others or by her. Is there a scarf, a dress, a color that stands out. Absorb it. Make it part of your story of life. When you tell the anecdote, dote on that color – It was a burgundy bra strap next to a pearlescent neck and deep jade green silk blouse – and every telling will bring the memory back in all its vibrancy. The story at telling will be as alive after fifty years as it was the first week.
I am older now and fears of memory loss are tangible and enormous. I am a storyteller, even if only to myself. My imagination is filled with colorizing, which comes from my memories, and I worry about shifting to black and white and then greyscale. When everything’s lost in fog except the immediate.
I watched my father lose his mental currency. I would call him to say I was coming to visit and when I got there he would not remember our phone call. It was heartbreakingly sad. He knew he had children but in his state he lacked immediate memory; the ability to know we were regularly reaching out in love to him. What a lonely life. But he could still regale with stories from his past, from my past. Moments valuable to him, kept by him, important to him. In the telling of his tales he came back to life; his world became vivid. His life lost and alone and drab was again filled with the color of living.
Take just a moment to absorb the moment, hold it as you would a naked newborn to your bare chest, so the bond is skin on skin. Hear the whirr of the oxygen. Feel the texture of the newborn, taste the air and forehead and lips, smell the tang of blood and birth and sweat and antiseptic. See blue eyes that have never seen the world and softer blue eyes that are seeing her child for the first time. Bring every sense to bear. Make it vivid. Trust me. It will all be worth it.