Lest we forget

Over the last 200 years, life expectancy worldwide has nearly doubled. Today, many live well into their 80s or 90s and beyond.

However, increased life expectancy isn’t without its challenges. For instance, one of the most frightening parts of becoming elderly is the risk of severe memory loss. Dementia rates increase significantly with age. It’s been said that after age 65, the risk doubles every five years.

Of course, everyone occasionally forgets things. It’s not uncommon to misplace car keys or forget the name of someone we just met. There’s a big difference, however, between minor memory impairment and severe dementia or Alzheimer’s. Temporary memory lapse is one thing. But completely losing one’s mind is quite another.

As bad as dementia can be, one of the ironies of life is just how imperfect memory can be, even for the most lucid and sound-minded among us. Several years ago, I attended a continuing legal education seminar with other attorneys. One of the presenters was a memory specialist. As most everyone knows, witnesses on the stand testifying about their personal knowledge of people or events play a big role in helping judges and juries determine the outcome of lawsuits that go to trial. So, it stands to reason that we want that testimony to be as accurate and reliable as possible.

But the memory specialist taught us an important lesson by putting our own memories to the test. He told us in advance that he was going to project a series of 15-20 images and words onto the screen, one at a time, over the period of about a minute. Our task was to concentrate and try to remember as many of those items as we could, then write them down as accurately as possible. Most of us were confident that we would ace the test, or at least come pretty close.

So how did we do? The vast majority of us barely remembered half of the items with perfect accuracy. Worse yet, we tended to make things up to fill in the gaps in our memories. So, for instance, if the one of the words that we couldn’t remember was “anxiety,” some of us wrote down “worry,” or “stress,” or “fear,” or sometimes even an altogether unrelated word.

The presenter’s point was that the testimony of even eye witnesses isn’t nearly as reliable as most of us assume it should be. Instead, it’s quite fallible, even shortly after the event occurs. And it only gets worse over time. That’s pretty disheartening in a forum where the goal is to hear “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Of course, studies on memory are inconclusive and vary widely depending on several factors. For instance, some people believe that the more vivid, emotional, or traumatic the experience is, the more easily it can be recalled in detail later. Still, most experts agree that our confidence in the accuracy of our memories usually far outstrips the actual accuracy of those memories.

A podcast that I recently watched theorized that when we remember a person or event from our distant past, we aren’t actually remembering that individual or occurrence. Instead, what we’re really remembering is our most recent recollection of what we saw or heard. So, take for instance, a hypothetical memory of crashing on my bicycle when I was six years old. When I’m 11, my parents might tell me about it and show me a picture of it, so that becomes my new memory of the event. When I’m 18, I remember that 11-year-old recollection, and that becomes my latest memory. And so on. By the time I’m 60, I may have thought about it a dozen times or so. But each time, I’m just remembering the prior memory, and so my perception of the event evolves little by little over time until it hardly resembles what actually happened.

Well, I guess I’m rambling, so pardon my senile musings. There’s a message here somewhere, if only I could remember what it was.

Ah, yes! The point I set out to make before I got sidetracked is this: memories are fallible and fade, but they’re worth preserving. Especially the good ones. A wise man once said that perhaps the most important word in the dictionary is “remember.” And another one said that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Those are big reasons why we celebrate Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Keep journals. Hold memorial services for our deceased loved ones. Collect oral histories. Build museums and monuments. Visit cemeteries. Keep scrapbooks. Take photos. Read and write biographies and memoirs. Spend quality time with our grandparents. Collect old coins and stamps. Restore classic cars. Preserve historic buildings. Wear throwback uniforms or hold old-timers days at the ballpark. And take walks down memory lane.

At the judgment bar, we’re told that we’ll have a bright recollection of all our good deeds and guilt. But for now, memory sometimes still fails us. I always tell people that my memory is perfect, but my recall stinks. It’s all in there somewhere. But accessing those memories isn’t always easy.

So, what am I doing to preserve the past and ensure that my best memories are still around to benefit generations to come? I try for at least one thing every day. That’s my challenge to each of you as well all. I hope we’ll all take that charge seriously, “Lest,” as Kipling famously penned, “we forget—lest we forget!”