Gradient Memory

Today is her birthday. Seventy-three years of life; two exactly since some behaviours that had been sporadic until then, sometimes almost comical, made it clear that they were signs of something way more serious than I could have imagined. The physical distance didn’t allow me to properly discern it, but it felt like, in the blink of an eye, everything began to fade away. A few years earlier, her vision and dexterity had indeed weakened, robbing her of the will to craft cross-stitches so perfect that they made the inside look like the outside; to outline with crochet dishcloths, tablecloths, bath towels, any piece of fabric that, to her, looked better with a frame around it; to knit clothes and rugs; to paint on canvas landscapes that only existed in her fantasy world; to draw one of the most beautiful roses I have ever seen and that I now only glimpse in my memory. Still, not satisfied with weakening her eyes and movements, time – relentless, cruel, inevitable – decided to strike also right at her two greatest abilities.

“Irritating”: this is how some people classify my memory, which once received an explicit, public and funny declaration of hate. Little do they know that the memory they see in me is a version that has already been filtered by the conscious – and vain! – attempt not to be like her. In a rare absence of fear of perceiving some faculty of mine as extraordinary, at least in my particular universe and in certain contexts, it looks remarkable that my memory is indeed superior to the average; just not superior to hers! To me, it was her memory that was absurdly irritating! That is why I keep on trying not to remember every detail of everything, which is a useless effort! When I realise it, I have already memorised even what I never wanted to learn. I would rather have inherited her speed of thought, though. When it suited her, she used to think frighteningly fast, riding the wave of light! It is such a pity that I was not given the chance to make my choice. The more I need my reasoning to be fast, the more it insists on slowing down! It looks like a prank.

Almost overnight, however, on a screen that was not a movie theatre, the most unimaginable scene came to life right before my eyes: the mind that, long before modern computerized systems, had spent almost thirty years manually calculating the net salaries of education workers in an entire state, suddenly, despite visibly exhausting efforts, was unable to answer what twenty minus five is. Twenty minus five: few calculations are simpler, but the result did not come even after an hour trying to lead her, step by step, to figure it out by herself. Only then I connected the dots that, before that moment, sounded like mere natural confusions of an advanced age: memorable dates were missing from her calendar; intimate images had been erased from her retina; large cities had been wiped off the map; elementary social filters were no longer applied; people from the present were no longer recognised and people from the past were remembered out of blue. “Alzheimer”, I hastily concluded.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve always taken for granted the most obvious diagnosis: lung cancer would take her out of the picture. This is a topic that has been terrifying me almost every day for some time now. Omnipresent in the books I’ve been reading, films and series I’ve been watching, stories of close ones, and, above all, in the last two years of my beloved four-legged son’s life, to me, no disease looks more painful for the patients than the damned cancer. It’s a “gone/back” series of news that keep taking turns until the end – which, in my concept, is not a cure, but merely the prolongation of the pain and the postponement of the inevitable. The idea of having to face this martyrdom again, in any role, terrifies me, but, as a particularly dear friend wisely noted, life is always much more creative than we can imagine. Instead of a predictable cancer, our expert at creativity surprises me with dementia – and, to top it all off, Frontotemporal Dementia, a type that’s even worse (something I didn’t even know existed) than the well-known Alzheimer’s.

If, due to personal trauma, I don’t believe in a cure for cancer (can call me ignorant; I don’t care), when it comes to dementia, my scepticism is based on science: there’s no cure, nor regression; it’s a disease that gradually and irreversibly degenerates its victims. Now if, based on observation, I believe that nothing’s more crushing for a patient than cancer, based on experience, nothing seems to drain the ones close to them more than dementia. Of course, any illness brings its challenges and anguish for everyone involved, but in dementia, in addition to the practical measures that become more complicated every day, seeing a person slowly lose their movement, their cognitive skills and their most precious memories is like watching them die while still alive. As they’re not even aware of what’s going on around them, they seem to be free from pain, but they’re also deprived of being – and knowing – who they are. It’s indescribably sad! And it’s also suffering the mourning of a death that doesn’t happen in an instant, but in a process with no beginning or end date.

Today is her birthday. She never stopped being a child, though. She never said it, but I know she always wanted to have a party, one of the many desires that were stifled; first because of the life she was given, later because she has become accustomed to crumbs and sacrifices. She never had it. She never will. Because, understandably, she was unable to get back up from the times she was harshly thrown to the ground, the loneliness that once was the cause of her severe falls is now the fruit she reaps from the harmful seeds that, aware or not, she made a point of planting. For some, it’s a deserved punishment; for others, it’s a natural consequence. They have no love, no time, no care for her. Her stories gets them tired. Between some and others, I see her now with a broader perspective than I had seen her before. It’s too late! All that’s left for me is to believe that, for someone who has suffered so many hardships, abuses, disappointments, absences and misfortunes, when it comes to the time in which she still lives, as well as the objects that she could receive today from the few who still have some affection for her, maybe forgetting is really her best present.