Long-term memories

"I bet you fifty that the next passing pedestrian is a woman." While his wife worked her ass off, the eccentric, politically engaged gentleman with the long white beard would bet with anyone on anything. They had three sons. Two of them remained bachelors all their lives and shared a household together. In 1919 the other son gave him something he was immensely proud of: a granddaughter called Marge. Let me tell you more about her.

Youth

Being an only child and grandchild, Marge was treated like a princess. On her mother's side of the family she did have one cousin: her mother had two sisters, one of whom stayed single all her life, but the other got married and had a son. He was a journalist and died in his early twenties when he got run over by a car in Moscow.

Marge's father was a trader with a keen interest in machinery. He was one of the first people to own a car, and when the television came, he immediately opened it up to find out how it worked. He bought just about anything if he thought he could sell after he fixed it -- ranging from furniture to lawnmowers -- or that he thought he could use for another purpose -- ranging from a parcel of left-handed gloves to broken parachutes. Mechanically and commercially gifted, he was quite successful. You'd never tell from the inside of their house. The furniture and decoration were very simple and sober. Sometimes items of furniture were even missing because they were just sold for a good price.

Marge's parents saved all their money for when they were old, and there was far more than anyone in the village could suspect. At the age of 68 they paid for their first self-indulgene: a bus trip abroad. It was an experience they would never forget. Afterwards they said they'd make such trips more often, but three months after the trip Marge's father drowned when he drove his car into a river. Her mother went to an old people's home where she was about the only one who paid for her stay herself. Ten years later, with all of her savings exhausted and the government finally paying for her stay, she died of old age.


Married with children

Marge met a guy from a family of butchers. Jacob was the complete opposite of her father: short-tempered, very proud, and focussed on status and what other people think. Not surprisingly, her husband and her father didn't get along. Marge and Jacob had three children together, first two daughters and after several years a son. Jacob earned a lot of money with his butcher shop, and didn't think he needed to insure himself for anything. That turned out to be a big mistake: his wife and two daughters caught tuberculosis. While the youngest daughter recovered quite quickly, his oldest daughter spent half a year in a sanatorium, and Marge stayed there twice as long. On top of that, no one dared buy his meat anymore and his shop went bankrupt. They lost everything.

Somehow Marge and Jacob managed to overcome this: they started a snack bar. Marge sold ice cream outside and Jacob fixed fries and other hot snacks, while the kids cut potatoes and prepared salads. It didn't take very long for their snack bar to become popular in the region. The two daughters got married and each had two children; the much younger son got married and got a son of his own, just before he was diagnosed with cancer. After fighting it two years the doctors gave him up, and so did his sisters and many other people. Amazingly, he went into remission and somehow seemed completely recovered.


The leg

Marge started limping and she could no longer move her leg as she wanted. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong with her leg and decided on brain surgery. They didn't find anything there either, but after the surgery they told her that something had gone wrong during the surgery and they damaged the part of the brain were short-term memories are stored. From that time on she kept forgetting things. Ironically enough it was the same time that I started remembering things. Visiting Marge in the hospital is one of my earliest memories. I was her youngest grandchild: her son's son.

My dad's sisters were very close to each other, and so were he and his parents. They visited each other several times a week, and I saw my grandmother change gradually.

My granddad always drove much too big a car just to show off, but it became their main means of transport now. Because Marge could no longer walk very well, Jacob focused on two new hobbies to share with his wife: driving through picturesque regions of the country and dining out. The flaw was that Jacob, who had lived through two world wars, couldn't throw food away. He always finished his plate, and pushed Marge to do the same. When she really couldn't eat any more, he'd finish her portion too. The always thin and active Marge grew fat and could no longer walk without assistance. Soon, Jacob could no longer support her: she needed a wheelchair.


Grape juice

As Marge's short-term memory was really bad, she could no longer really follow stories people told. At first trying to follow, trying to follow, she would ask questions. Since this didn't work very well for her and seemed to clearly annoy people, she gave up the effort, accepting that the stories would just swirl around her. People thought she had Alzheimer's disease and simply stopped trying to talk to her anymore. They talked to Jacob instead.

Jacob played cards regularly and left Marge watching television and doing crossword puzzles at home. When he returned if was often dark outside and Marge would be sitting in a dark house lit only by the telly.

One day my mother heard someone brag about the powers of a certain clairvoyant. She was skeptical and carrying a photo of Marge sitting on the couch in order to demonstrate that the medium's powers were nonsense. The man felt the photo with his fingers and told my mother a lot of detailed and accurate information about Marge. He described her characteristic way of walking far better than anyone ever had, and the only thing that puzzled him was a very small part of her back where he couldn't feel anything. Jacob later told my mom that that was exactly where the doctors had done the biopsy when Marge had tuberculosis.

The clairvoyant told my mom to let Marge regularly drink and eat a few particular food items; the only specific instruction I remember was that Marge should drink three glasses of grape juice every day. These instructions were followed. After a few weeks my mom went to visit my grandparents and couldn't believe what she saw: Marge was home alone and walking through the house, turning on the lights. She was actually walking! I could see that my grandmother was starting to become more involved in conversations. But, my granddad didn't see any change and stopped giving her the grape juice and the other things. I guess if you are in daily contact, you just cannot notice any slow changes.


Stories and jokes

One day Jacob called my mother in panic: he had dropped Marge on the bathroom floor and couldn't get her on her feet again. She was in a lot of pain. A few weeks later my mom saw how Jacob would routinely move Marge from her wheelchair into bed: he would stand her up, leaning against him and then he would push her sideways onto her bed, straining her knee so painfully as to make her scream. My parents convinced Jacob he couldn't take care of his wife any longer. She went to a nursing home where she was put in a department for Alzheimer patients.

Marge's two daughters, my aunts, kept checking whether their mom could follow their stories. Of course she couldn't. They would correct her and reinforce their conclusions that she didn't understand anything anymore. They started talking about her in the third person in her presence. When they did address her, they spoke as if she were a two-year old. Marge didn't do anything about it -- I have no idea why. At some point everyone but my parents and me treated Marge that way, even her own husband. Once my grandparents, my mom and I were sitting at a table in the facility, and my mother protested that Marge didn't have Alzheimer's and shouldn't be treated as if she did. Jacob jumped up and shouted in tears, "She a goddamn pathetic creature; she doesn't have a clue what's going on!" Marge started to cry. From then on my parents wouldn't visit her when anyone else did.

Sometimes, I went there alone and I was amazed by the conversations we had. I didn't correct her when she remembered things incorrectly and noticed that without that tension, she became more and more talkative. She would ask me about school, as every granny does, and surprisingly, one time I visited she asked me how my chemistry test had gone! For some reason while she couldn't remember what she had for lunch three hours ago -- something her daughters always asked her in a childish tone, only to find out that she didn't remember -- she did remember that I had taken a chemistry test a few days before. Sometimes, when my parents or I were alone with her, she even made jokes. She never did that when other people were around. In fact, with other people around, she never said a word unless someone asked her a direct question. Usually people would ask Jacob things about her, while she sat there. Once, when my parents were alone with her, she made clear to them that she understood everything that happened with her and that she was very sad about it, but that she didn't want to be a burden to anyone.

As she remembered everything before her operation, I often talked with her about her past. She'd easily go on for hours telling me stories from her past, and very entertainingly too. She told me that her father and I would have got along very well; my dad had often told me the same thing. I sure hope I'm not too much like that great-grandfather since he's the only completely bald person in my family tree.


The end

When I was seventeen she suddenly called me by my dad's name. The next time I visited she kissed me on the lips and almost squeezed me in her arms when I said good bye and called me Jacob. I didn't really know what to say, but correcting her would probably make her feel very embarrassed, so I didn't. A few days later she died. It turned out she had had colon cancer for a long time, and Jacob decided against treatment -- probably a wise decision.

The funeral ceremony focussed completely on the last fifteen year of her life; exactly the part that she wouldn't have wanted people to remember. The music chosen by the two daughters, Spring from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, was a far too impersonal a selection -- why not choose her favourite songs? She never listened to classical music.

After the funeral one of my aunts said it was a pity that I was so young when she had the brain surgery that I never got to know the person she was. I politely said, "Yes, it is," but in fact I wanted to kill her for having treated her mother the way she did.

If I ever had the choice to talk with someone who's passed away already, I wouldn't choose Carl Friedrich Gauss, Frédéric Chopin, Leonardo da Vinci, Aristotle, or Jesus of Nazareth -- nor even my own father; I would choose to have one more conversation with my dear grandmother.