By Butch Freedman
“Time’s the thief of memory” ― Stephen King, The Gunslinger
Let me begin with a very unsurprising confession: my memory is failing. And that’s a frightening fact of aging. It’s only the little things so far: names and nouns are routinely hard to come up with. “What do you call that thing, you know, the thing that we use on the television. You know, the square thingy? With buttons?” “The tall guy, you know, the one who goes to the gym? He wears a baseball cap. Come on, we talk all the time. What’s his name, dammit?” Eventually it comes to me that I am seeking the remote control and my friend’s name is Greg, which I decide now I will recall by remembering his name begins and ends with the letter G. Getting old is hard. The body and the brain inevitably break down. Sure, there are ways to slow the process—staying active helps, engaging with others is important, as is continuing to stay informed and even hanging out with those crazy young folks—you know, the fifty and sixty- year-olds. I do crossword puzzles and the Spelling Bee in the N.Y. Times. I enjoy the process, actually look forward to each new day’s challenges. But still the gradual degeneration continues. New aches and pains appear, and your daughter reminds you that you’ve told her the same story “more than a few times now, Dad.”
The memories that I worry most about losing, though, are the ones that I most deeply treasure: the years of growing up with my birth family, my parents, and siblings, and extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins. And all those precious years of watching my own family grow. I still remember most of it, but the specifics are growing fuzzy, the days and dates a jumble. I admire people who were smart enough to keep daily or weekly journals of their lives. There’s an old Chinese proverb that states: “The palest ink is better than the strongest memory.” Photos help to remind us of our earlier years. I wish I had taken more of them. And letters, which nobody writes any more, are a lovely way to remember certain times and friendships. After my mother passed away, my siblings and I discovered a box full of letters my father had written to her while he was away during World War II. I read them all, and discovered a world my parents had inhabited that I knew very little about.
I’ve been a constant chronicler of my own life and times; sometimes to the detriment of family and friends who were not always pleased with my stories or the way I told them. My sister and I didn’t speak for a full year after I (unwisely) sent her a copy of my book of essays, Beach Bum*. I knew I was in big trouble, when she called to say, in a chilling voice, “Well, I’ve read your little book.” It got worse from there. Of course, my memories are not the same as those of either my brother or sister, even though we grew up in the same household, experiencing the same day-to-day life. In our memories, we might as well have lived with different families and different parents. Memory is a slippery slope. Maybe that’s part of the reason it slides away as the years go by.
Still I want to hold on tightly to as much of my past as I can. It’s one reason I write almost daily. I don’t care if what I write about is not always strictly accurate. I don’t claim that — the writer’s license. These are my memories, good and bad, painful at times, and joyful often. I don’t turn away from any of them, and try not to rewrite or edit what I look back on. When I’m no longer interested or curious or scribbling away is when I’ll know I’m in trouble. For what are we without our memories? There’s a question I don’t want to answer.
*Butch’s book “Beach Bum” is available on Amazon – https://www.amazon.com/Beach-Bum-Robert-Butch-Freedman/dp/1629015687/ref=sr_1_1?crid=P6JRRBGSYKXR&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.s7UlU6_Rc78dD1F9GMBjSOKyClISgvoTAdMLsOC0Dcw.Y7-iQ7tjbc3pee7PRAIxRQ28cIgm3R-zII7gIbOCplY&dib_tag=se&keywords=Beach+Bum+book+by+Robert+Freedman&qid=1789089606&sprefix=beach+bum+book+by+robert+freedman%2Caps%2C532&sr=8-1
