Memory Loss

The article about Alzheimer's disease hit close to home for me because last year my grandfather, Abe Shmerling, passed away from this particular disease. The disease, like the article said, takes away the victim's long term memory first and eventually their short term memory. The disease is not only hard for the patient to accept, but for the patient's loved ones, it is hard to cope with as well. 

"Would you still be you if you couldn't remember your past?"

At first, I quickly said no. How could you be the same person if all the experiences you had in the past were lost forever. My grandfather was a phenomenal photographer as a young man, but as the disease progressed, he forgot how to use a camera. His identity as a photographer was lost forever. But then I thought about the other aspects of identity. Identity isn't just your experiences, but it is also what defines you (i.e. characteristics, interests, likes/dislikes, etc.). 

My grandfather had always been a soft-spoken, yet goofy man. He loved to make people laugh and could lighten the mood with his silly behavior. For instance, he used to take my thumb into his fist, and while pretending to smack my thumb, he would slide his fist up and "miss" my thumb. It is hard to visualize, but this was something he did with all his grandchildren to make them smile. I remember in the last stages of the disease, I visited him in the nursing home. He was sitting there quietly staring into space and when he saw us, his eyes lightened up. I went over to sit with him and before I knew it, he had my thumb in his hand and he pulled the same little trick he did when I was younger. He was still the same Abe Shmerling he was years before. 

In a way, losing one's memory really does take a large part of one's identity away. But not all of it. You can still retain all of one's characteristics that make up one's personality or one can even perform certain behaviors that had been ritualistic in the past (i.e. the thumb trick or in the case of the author's mother, washing the dishes).