Remembering by Betsy

I can’t remember if it’s always been like this, but lately “remembering” issues are cropping up all the time. I’ll think of something I have to do and two minutes later I’ve completely forgotten it and I’m on to something else. Often I’ll list in my head a number of chores and tasks that are absolutely necessary and important to get done right away. So important that I decide that I simply MUST make a list immediately of all the items. Then within minutes I have forgotten to make the list, I have forgotten most of the chores and I’ve been completely distracted by a totally unrelated activity. When I’ve completed that activity, I can’t remember any of the other items that I was going to write on a list that I can’t remember if I have written and if I have written it I certainly can’t remember where the list is.

Having described this state of affairs, I am left scratching my head and saying, “This person lives in a state of constant confusion.” But it’s not like that really. It’s because I am very focused on what I am doing that the other things are forgotten--until I’m finished with what I’m focused on. Again I can’t remember if it’s always been like this.

They say that in our old age we forget things. But I have to wonder if it’s not just memory overload. After all an 80 year old has four times as much to remember as a twenty year old. Shouldn’t that alone make it harder to recall things

When it comes to remembering the past, I often wonder why it is that we have a clear picture in our memories of select incidences. What is it about those particular happenings that make them memorable. For me, it could be a good experience or a bad experience or a rather bland experience. But, for some reason, that memory is the one I access. For some it seems memories of the past are readily available and for others never available.

Perhaps it is a basic talent of sorts for some. I see this in my 3 children who all are of normal intelligence, but one has ready access to memories the others do not.

Then some are predisposed to remember numbers, others remember names, some remember music better than others. 

Then there is inherited memory. An all-consuming topic for the modern psychologist interested in the study of memory. On that subject: someone once suggested to me that I have a phobia for snakes because when I lived in a tree, in a past life, a snake got me. Yikes! I’m glad I don’t remember that!

Most of what I think about memory is based on observation or belief. I have very few facts. The human brain being the complicated “animal” that it is will be the enigma that it is to the lay person for many years to come--at least I believe it will.

Enough rambling about remembering. It’s time to check “write about remembering” off my list and start a new list of what to do next.

© 11 March 2013

About the Author  

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.