Striving to Remember

My friend Ines is experiencing the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Back in the day she was a very successful theater actress, gracing South American stages north and south. Now, she visited my acting workshop and critiqued us actors in inspiring ways. She was a good friend of our instructor and quickly became friends of the students as well. I would pick her up once a week for our workshop because ever since she got diagnosed she decided not to drive anymore. During the rides together we chatted of pretty much everything. She was a true testament of perseverance. The day she found out about her condition she did nothing but mind exercises to delay the process of it. She played board games, crosswords puzzles, memorized lines of plays, anything to keep her mind sharp. Together with medication she was seeing positive results and had better memory than I did sometimes. I always joked with her about it, making her smile with pride. She told me once that the hardest thing was forgetting details about the ones she loves. She looked at old family photo albums daily and tested herself on the names of all her loved ones. She feared the day she would not remember them at all.

Ines suffers from a dreadful condition she has no choice about. But it made me think of how often without realizing it we sometimes wish for the same. We hope we had never met someone now long gone or wish for some painful memories to vanish into thin air. Hoping a swift backwards brush stroke could take the bad and the good too, leaving the canvas blank once more. I have to admit I wished for that once while still wounded. I did it out of necessity in order to feel myself again. 

Even though wishful thinking did not grant me my wish, time was delivering it to me. Suddenly I couldn't remember some details of us anymore or things he used to say. I still remember though how his nose wrinkled every time he was about to tell me something painful that he wanted to hide behind a smile. And now I feared that one day I might forget even that. Memories wash away and the details that make someone stick to your heart start losing its grip. It is part of moving on I suppose but like my friend Ines I can't help to fear for that day. Now I wish time would not steal so much from me because I know somewhere while the wounded strives to forget the brave strives to remember.