Aging, Forgetting and Remembering: The Insistence of Memory

In The Nostalgia Factory (Yale), history of psychology professor Douwe Draaima deals with both aspects of memory in the aging mind: the forgetting, and the remembering. He is reassuring on the forgetting. After reviewing various memory techniques (most of dubious value) he writes: “However active your lifestyle, however varied your existence, your memory will gradually decline with age. This is perfectly natural. Anyone who still has the memory of a twenty-year-old at the age of seventy is not entirely normal.”

 Everyone is annoyed by not being able to remember something, but the worry has increased with more awareness of various forms of dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease. Draaima reiterates the statistics—for people over 65, less than 5% are likely to be stricken, and even having a parent who has suffered from dementia still doesn’t get you to 10%. The difference in symptoms is the difference between forgetting where you put your car keys and forgetting what your car keys are for.

“The vast majority of people who turn up at memory clinics give such a detailed account of all the things that have slipped their minds recently that it is clear they have no reason to worry.”

 On the remembering however, Draaisma carefully reviews a number of studies (his and others) to conclude that yes, the old tend to remember the distant past better than the recent past, and more specifically, their most vivid memories cluster around their 20th year. Other memories that often remain vivid are of “firsts”--first love, first eclipse, first day of school, etc.

   He is thorough on the phenomena: how the focus on the past increases with age, for instance. He writes about residents of an old folks home in their 80s and 90s who no interest in their present, not even people around them. Their listlessness turns to vibrant interest when shown obsolete artifacts and photos from their youth. They even begin to interact—members of such group found that they came from the same town and even went to the same school around the same time.

 His research affirms that “as the reminiscence effect attains its full force, memories will return to which you have long been denied access. These are memories that really do slumber.”

 His research also suggests that as time goes on, memories emerge more and more as stories. He interviewed centenarians who hadn’t written autobiographies, “yet the stories of their lives have the usual cast of characters and twists and turns that we see in the autobiographical genre. The event that started it all, the moment that brought a complete change of course, the meeting that was to have important consequences, the lesson for life, even the insults that seem to make so much more of an impression in youth—they emerge of their own accord when the centenarians look back over their long lives.”

 Draaisma recognizes that evolutionary explanations for this phenomenon are inadequate, but doesn’t offer a persuasive alternative. A different kind of psychologist (like James Hillman) would suggest a search for meaning, a deepening of soul, a completion.

 But this research does affirm what I have come to accept: as we grow older, our job—like it or not—is remembering. We don’t really have much choice in the matter. But we can try to think about it all, apply whatever wisdom we can derive to the future, and otherwise ponder the mystery of existence, while we still have some.

In future posts I'll come back to some of Draaisma's conclusions with specific applications to the Boomer generation.  If I remember.

When We're 65--whoo!

It's 1/1/11 and the first official baby boomers turn 65 this year, including me. There's a wearily and maddeningly cliched piece on the subject on the front page of the New York Times. Here's the online link, but don't bother unless you click on to the comments as well. There you will see the hostility behind the supposed irony of the piece expressed directly as generational resentment, with the promise of generational war. But more often you'll also see booming self-defense, a lot wittier and more trenchant than the piece itself.

One would have to be a fool not to note the practical considerations of this milestone--the relationship to Medicare and Social Security being paramount for many. Whatever the historical circumstances of our generation, we have lived these lives in these times, and it's everybody's right once they actually reach this age to think about every possible aspect of this past and our lives, as well as our relationship to the present and future.

We feared getting old as young people do. That illustration above comes from about 1969, purporting to show the Beatles as old men. It scared the hell out of me, but I put it up on the inside door of my room at the University of Iowa the semester I was at the Writers Workshop there, though I was mostly trying not to be sent off to kill or/and be killed. I suppose it was to scare myself into making good use of my time then, to not wait to accomplish something. Time's winged chariot sort of thing.

(But being disappointed that we didn't accomplish more in our lives is according to the Times piece another characteristic of our "self-absorbed" generation. Maybe this guy should have been in the car with me when I was 20, listening to an older farmer in Illinois talk about how little he'd done with his life. Regret--or as Richard Ford put it, "searing regret"-- is not exactly a boomer invention.)

Today of course this image means other things. First, most obviously, is that two of the Beatles didn't live to get that old. A second might be that the surviving two don't actually look like that. We do have a different sort of 60s (the age, not the decade), and gauging that is part of our task now.

Still, we are acutely aware that we're not here for all that much longer. And of what we may face between here and there. This image of the boomer generation holding all the cards is less than laughable, it looks like part of the problem. We're watching pensions disappear for those who predicated their lives on earning them. We're watching medical care costs skyrocket and insurance falter. And that generational resentment added to a more general callousness. A resentment that seems to hold a lot of projection. No, we probably can't expect much, not even what used to be called decency. We're dealing with the luck of the draw at each significant moment.

And the idiocy of our drug-dependent, for-profit and perversely regulated health and care systems puts us in the way of cruelty masked as care. Another Times piece today--the one with the most hits--is about "new" approaches to caring for Alzheimer's patients. Care that is little more than common sense: well-lit rooms are more cheerful, especially when they allow old eyes to see. Instead of drugs and feeding tubes, give them food they like, with good feelings attached. Chocolate works better than Xanax.

Care along the lines of Beatitudes--what a great name, too--is proving more effective and also costs less. It helps patients and caregivers. And it's loving. I'm sure everybody who reads this piece sees its wisdom. But when chocolate is substituted for Xanax, drug companies don't make outrageous profits. Thoughtful and courageous administrators and caregivers may cost more than minimum wage workers--although rules (by for-profits as well as government) probably prevent even badly paid caregivers from doing what they know is better. So while the Beatitudes approach may spread, there's a lot of power likely to be marshaled against it.

While it did take a certain creativity to discover that emotional memory may last even in those whose cognitive memory is eroded or short-circuited, it also takes the kind of close attention that family members give, as well as formed the basis for many of the insights of early psychology--Jung for instance. Today psychology is all about drugs and administering clever little tests to undergraduates and making big claims for the findings.

Paying close attention to others is not the opposite of paying close attention to yourself. It can be part of the same process. For example, a writer who doesn't precisely divulge her age--and how could you, at Salon--offers an observation that older people are nicer to each other, and she offers an opinion as to why that is, which is, if I might summarize it thus, we know to what extent we're all bullshit.

To which I'd add, we know to what extent we're all vulnerable. But there's another reason, an additionally heartening one. I saw my uncle at my niece's wedding last month. He's now in his late 70s, and he told me (as he did the last time I saw him, more than a year before) that he thinks about my mother a lot. She was his oldest sister, there was about 14 years difference in their ages. He says he doesn't remember a lot anymore, but he remembers her acts of kindness. It reminded me of the last conversation I had with his other older sister, my aunt, who was the middle child. In talking about her father, she remarked on how kind he was.

So kindness is remembered. And we can all accomplish kindness, and so be remembered for that.

60's Now News: Kids, Brains and Rock & Roll

It's a common experience: memory changes with age. But how those changes manifest is an individual thing. What's more or less healthy, and what's a sign of real trouble to come? The spectre of Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases haunts the 60s.

There's news in the science of it all, but taken as a whole it's unclear what it means. Promising research may turn out to be a "breakthrough," and then again... Gina Kolata of the NY Times reported research of a test that purports to be able to predict Alzheimer's with 100% accuracy--but so far not exactly what you would call very early. She follows up with a report on the research process in the field generally focused on early diagnosis. But an AP report seems more cautionary.

It's interesting that the Times covers the field so closely, probably reflecting the concerns of the most loyal newspaper readers. They highlight the success of Ringo Starr and other 60s rockers still on the road. Which is great if you were already a star decades ago, but maybe not if you weren't: a judge has allowed an age discrimination suit against Google to go forward.

NPR chimes in on how the aging brain can be sharper than previously believed, and research suggests what grandparents probably know--tutoring kids can keep you sharp.

Connections

An article on potentials of the brain as it gets older suggests valuable roles for boomer neurons, explained in the post below.

The New York Times recently ran a piece by Barbara Strauch on "How to Train the Aging Brain," which was top rated on its web site--testimony I suppose to boomer interest in the subject, as well as in newspapers, even on the Internet.

The advice--the "how to" part--was unsurprising: learn new things. But there was also some reassurance, both in terms of common memory changes (less retention of recent information, forgetting names, etc.) and in the latest brain science, which shows much less actual brain deterioration due to aging than previously believed.

But one paragraph in particular stood out:

"Recently, researchers have found even more positive news. The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can. "

Just as some of the problems ring a bell, so does this assertion. Maybe this is what they used to mean by the wisdom of years: perspective, the main idea, the big picture.

It's especially important now. Life is being reshaped so rapidly and extensively by pervasive new technologies that experienced perspective is correspondingly more valuable. It may not be as important to keep up as to keep an experienced eye on what's going on. Outside the main flow, you aren't swept up in it so completely as the young tend to be.

Information is still important, but different information (gathered from a span of time) and a different way of seeing it, makes different connections. It isn't the whole answer, of course. The blizzard can be as bewildering outside it as inside. But seeing significance and even solutions constitute useful contributions, that it seems we can more naturally make.