Memory

Anterograde amnesia.

Imagine what it's like to be introduced to someone for the first time. You hold out your hand and introduce yourself, smiling shyly and expecting much of the same in return. But what if the stranger says, "Oh come on. Don't act as though you don't know me. After all the times we got together and talked plants and life-changing accidents. How's your dog doing?" You then try to remember them and find that you can't. A close friend and you couldn't even say what her name was.

Imagine someone asks you how you met your boyfriend. You open your mouth and find that...you have no idea. You didn't know him in September, but by March you were good friends. Your boyfriend looks at you and tells the story and you listen to it for the first time as if the girl he spoke of was not you.

I wrote a few journals on the subject once I began realizing that I could not seem to remember things that had happened even the week before. Or rather, I realized I could not remember anything from the week before. As if I there was a black hole that began with hitting the pavement and was consuming my mind up to a few day before the current time.

That's what Anterograde amnesia is. You have trouble forming new memories after a severe head injury. Mine lasted for pretty solid months with a couple gaps and gradually less and less fuzzy from January to April.

It's hard. Scary, even. And makes me sad. There are things I know of that I wish so hard I could remember. Like I know that I was in a flute trio with Carol and Emma, but I do not have any memories, any feelings, associated with it except vague confusion and emptiness. I want to know where that flower came from. I want to know how I made it through those hard times. I want to know the friends I made and the lessons I learned. 

I look at every experience now as I always do and wonder at all the little details that I'll never regain. When did Emma become a young woman to me? Before the accident she was a girl, but the next thing I remember, she wasn't. I can't remember my niece's first months. Carol took care of me for 10 days and I have little to no idea what happened for most of it. There's a lot of sadness and regret.

And yet, there was a "newness" or "childlikeness" to the things I wrote. Every day was new. I only wrote of the moments then. For example, here's one from Sunday after I got hit.

                        "God knew what He was doing. One thing was
                        Saturday. I had cabin fever and so Carol 

                        and Charles took me out for a walk around the
                        neighborhood in my wheelchair. We laughed 

                        and teased and everything. Then we saw some
                        trees that had yellow leaves. I bluntly stated 

                        that I wished I could rake some and jump in
                        them. Smiling, Carol walked to the side of the  

                        road, picked up about a dozen yellow leaves
                        and threw them at me from the front, so they'd 

                        land in my lap and I could play with them. It
                        cheered me up so much.

                        Charles helped too. When I said we were going
                        to be home to early if we headed straight 

                        back, he said okay and started spinning me in
                        circles. It was fun."

I have no memory of this, but it touches me to know. And the neat thing is, though there are a lot of crazy things (like letting me perform on a tambourine while singing on crutches or trying to stop me from standing on my good leg on the wheelchair) I'm finding more and more the memories I'm being told are amazing ones. Its true that I want to know everything, but this has given me a new perspective. 

I didn't so fully how much people care for me, how many amazing friends and strangers God sent, until the stories come back as if they are someone else. That is why I am chasing down these memories now. To fill that emptiness that consumed much of my thoughts. To fill that with love from others.  It's a new concept for me, but then again having a memory gap is new territory as well. There's so much still to learn.