When my grandma was near the end of life with Alzheimer’s Disease, my younger sister would visit her and simply introduce herself as a new friend. Earlier in her life, our grandma made the best pies. She always had three or four cooling on the stove; it didn’t even need to be Thanksgiving. My sister once brought up that fact with her “new friend,” announcing, “I hear you like to bake pies. You know, my grandma used to make the best pies ever.” To that, my grandma—the very lady of whom my sister spoke, said as if insulted, “I doubt it!”
“Memory Recall” is a high value, and it is what seems to get marred or destroyed altogether when dementia sets in. In tears, we leave a nursing home saying, “Why can’t mom remember me?” We use phrases like, “She isn’t who she used to be—she’s only a shell.” I’m not sure we realize just how dehumanizing those words can be, and probably how wrong we are for assuming only one form of “memory recall” is all that matters.
For my grandma, the “memory recall” typically valued was entirely lost. The old lady in the nursing home did not recognize that the woman in front of her was her own flesh-and-blood. But she had not forgotten a core part of who she is at heart—the best at making pies.
I'm currently reading John Swinton’s Becoming Friends of Time: Disability, Timefullness, and Gentle Discipleship. In it, he points out a difference in the English and Spanish words associated with memory. The pertinent English word is “remember” where the Latin roots (“re”, meaning to pass back through and “memor”—related to the mind) center around some form of cognitive recall. It is tracing back through the mind to some past event and bringing it to the present to relive once again. It is a mental process of recalling facts, figures, people, or events as if they were present once again in our imagination—something that gets harder, if not impossible, in the shadow of dementia.
The Spanish recordar, however, is slightly different: passing back through the heart (think “cardiac” and related words). In this way, memory is not a cognitive process of searching back through the mind, but through the heart.
Swinton references works demonstrating how memory is actually tied to emotional and sensual experiences. Consider, for example, an elderly lady with advanced dementia having no obvious personal or social awareness beyond the end of her own nose. Engaging her in meaningful dialogue proves impossible, but she suddenly comes alive at a piano and plays “How Great Thou Art” as gracefully as if she was 20. The music, the notes, the feel of the keys on her fingers, the rhythms and harmonies in her ears—they do something to her, something mysterious and profound. For as much as it might be a form of memory recall—taking something from the past and bringing it into the present—it also mysteriously transports her to the past, to a day and age where the song and the community who sang it carries a deep and unmovable place in her heart.
We all have this experience. Whenever my wife stands on a beach, the sight of the unending water, the feel of a warm breeze blowing across her skin—the sensory input does more than simply remind her of the islands where she grew up. In those moments, even at the dank algae-infested waters of Lake Erie, she is transported to the very beaches of Fiji themselves. It is more than memory recall and cognitive processes; there is something deeply embedded in her heart that the sensory experience is drawing her into. She is not remembering the beach, she is there.
For me, eucalyptus is something I despise. The first time I met that smell was at the funeral home after my grandpa died. Ever since then, whenever that hits my nose, I am once again a 10 year old boy standing before a casket.
So, with my grandma, it wasn’t that she had forgotten. She may not have recognized that the young woman in front of her was her own granddaughter, but she would never forget there was no one in the world better at baking pies than herself. That memory was tucked away in the core of who she was. Perhaps dementia and Alzheimer’s had damaged the physical organ of her brain to such a degree she was no longer able to make the right and appropriate connections between events of the past and the reality of the present. Nevertheless, the sensual experiences of her life—smells, sounds, feels, and conversations about pie—would always be kept hidden in her heart.
“Why doesn’t she remember me?”
Who’s to say she doesn’t? Obviously in the moment, my grandma would not have been able to answer if my sister were to ask, “Do you know who I am?” And I don’t mean to make light of that. Part of the joy of relationships is knowing and being known. Parents love when kids recognize them from across the room and come running with arms wide open for a hug. When my grandma was no longer able to recognize the people who loved her—the people she loved—the appropriate word to use is “tragic.”
Near the end, grandma would routinely confuse names. Jeff became Wilbur, Ken became Buck. She confused me for my uncle, my uncle for my dad, my son for me, my brother for her dad. Making the connections between faces and names became almost impossible for her to do with any accuracy.
But you’ll never convince me that her memory was destroyed. Impaired? Obviously, but not destroyed. Yes, she confused all of those faces and all of those names, but they were faces and names of people she loved, not people she forgot. They were people not confined to her mind but kept close to her heart. They were people who mattered to her, who had impacted her deeply, people she cared for even if she couldn’t remember why.
My dad is in the beginning phases of just such a thing, and I suppose it is his destiny. Many who occupy the same branch in our family tree all suffered some form of dementia in the end. I would be foolish to pretend it is not my destiny too.
But I witnessed something remarkable in this way just a few weeks ago. Our family went to go spent time with my mom and dad; unbeknownst to us, my son also invited all his cousins. At one point, the grandkids decided to go to the park and play kickball. I stayed behind with my parents, and while my mom and I chatted, my dad just sat quiet, staring at the floor. I have no clue what memories, if any, ran through his mind, but I suggested we take a walk to that park where the kids were playing.
When we got there my dad came alive, joining in the play. He was fast, agile, could catch and throw a ball like he was a teenager again, quick-witted with trash-talk and jokes. There is something about the sensuous experience of playing with people he loved throughout his life that left a profound imprint on his heart. Playing—as a kid, as a dad, and as a grandpa—became a core part of who he is. The color of the sky, smell of the cut grass, the sound of kids laughing, the feel of a ball in his hand—the sensory experiences on that day brought about all of the things stamped on his heart.
Again, recognition failure is devastating and tragic and a proper reason to mourn. Because I will be there someday myself, the eschatological hope I have is that even if I no longer recognize the people I love, God himself will never forget me. In the meantime, if memory recall—tracing our way back to things that happened once upon a time, cognitively bringing them to mind in the present: re-membering—if that forms the basis of who we are as humans, we will always have to fight the urge to devalue and dehumanize those with dementia until we ourselves are resigned to the same fate.
If, however, we take a linguistic approach from Spanish and think of ourselves not from the memories we can recall but on the basis of the things tucked away in our hearts, our posture toward dementia just feels different. Should there ever come a day when I have to introduce myself to my dad as a new friend, I will take solace in the fact that there is at least a piece of me immovably tucked away in his heart.
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