When Memories Fade

When Memories Fade.

My mother has been diagnosed with Dementia.  Not Alzheimers exactly, they are stopping short of calling it that.  Alzheimers is sort of a parenthetical of Dementia.  But they are both diseases of the brain and have devastating effects on the mind.  And while her condition is terrible, this is not about the disease.  It’s about the fallout.

When I was a child amazing things happened around my childhood.  Things that could only be explained as divine.  God watching over me and even giving me special attention at times.  They were not things that were told to me by my parents, they were things I remember and they were verified by my parents.  Two people that were very grounded and conservative in nature and from all accounts did not make up stories.

In 1984 I lost my father to congestive heart failure and the first co-confirmer was gone.  Gone were his affirmations that the stories I reiterated were true.  Leaving my mother and my sisters to legitimize my claims.  And frankly I don’t remember which sisters were around for the events so I am not sure that I can rely on them to back me up.  But there was still my mother.

For my own sanity I would occasionally ask my mother to revisit those events and even up to her diagnosis of Dementia she did not waver in her confirmations.  But now, many months into her disease, she can neither confirm nor deny my allegations.  In fact, she cannot confirm or deny that she has a son…or any daughters.  Most of her active memories are fleeting and consist of her childhood.

So as I grow older myself, I wonder if I will begin to question the memories that I have of my youth?  Did it actually happen or is it just some story that I told myself to feel special; to feel different?

It is not just the loss of my youth with which I am concerned (I certainly have enough grown memories to keep me going), but it’s the thought that I did not ask my parents enough questions.  It wasn’t until I got older that I wanted to know certain things about my family and its heritage.  And now, with most of the elders gone and no written record of which to refer, I am to be content with certain unknowns.

I have children of my own now.  They are living their lives, dealing with their issues, and not thinking about the questions that they do not even know they have.  So I am being proactive.  The question that I have for my parents…I will ask of myself…so that my children will never have to wonder.

Ha!  They will still wonder.  Just maybe not as much!