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Using Memory

When we were growing up, A's dad was by consensus opinion the fun dad - the kind that provoked envy from the rest of us who had regular dads who did non-fun dad things. This man could participate in our conversations, see the humor of our juvenile jokes and tell us stories that made us laugh. So when A told me his father is developing dementia, I had to ask him if his personality is still the way it once used to be. According to A, his dad forgets things that were said in the last hour but has absolutely vivid memories of the past going back to his early childhood. It seems like the farther back in time he goes, the more he is able to retrieve. So the memories of the time when A and I were kids is still intact so chances are I would see the flashes of the person he used to be then even now. 

On this most recent visit home, A's dad recited from memory the entire Ghalib poem he had used to woo his mother with some sixty years ago. They were sitting together as a family with A's older siblings present along with their mother as his father recited Ghalib. A said, it was remarkable how much the sound of the words seemed to transport his dad back in time whereas his mom while happy to hear the verses was very much in the present moment. They were two people anchored to the same memory responding to recollection very differently, A's dad likes to live in the past a lot because that is where the details of his life continue to exist. He realizes he will lose more of it over time and hence the desire to grasp what he can while he can - he often converts his recollections to voice recordings. Hearing about  A's father made me think about this piece about writing and memory

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