"All should be hid under the cloud of forgetting": On Memory Loss and Courtesy

[Image via]

Some time ago I was troubled by two things: my memory and money. Since I became estranged from my family, my memory had grown too large for me, like a great house where many rooms have been shut. And yet I could not withdraw from it either. I remembered people I could no longer speak to, tendernesses I could no longer cherish, arguments I could no longer win. This troubled me greatly, and often.

I missed the crowded sensation that comes with knowing you have a family — of thinking idly, and shallowly, and at random, “I have a sister; I wonder what she is doing today” or “My aunt must be back from her trip by now,” of having numerous threads to keep track of.

The more these memories troubled me, the more time I spent in remembering them. Because I did not talk to any of these people, I could produce no new experiences or memories. I could only accumulate more and more copies of things that had already passed between us, often distorted with anger, resentment, exaggeration, and useless speculation. This mental labor felt like trying to fill an empty and overlarge house with stretched-out coins from a penny-press machine: tedious and insane.

It also did not make me any money. Since I had recently left a well-paying job and anotherof my freelance contracts had ended, I thought I had better do something more profitable with my spare time. I found a part-time position as a home aide for senior citizens living with memory loss.

This suited me very well for several reasons. I missed spending time with people much older than me. I wanted to be useful to someone my grandmother’s age, since I could no longer be useful to her. And I wanted to be around people whose relationship to memory was troubled in different ways from my own, being exhausted with my own self-obsessed bouts of remembering.

Before the company could assign me to work with a particular client, they would first arrange an interview with one of the client’s primary caregivers, usually a partner or an adult child, to see how compatible we might be.

I liked this part of the job straight away. I liked making polite small talk with someone in need of relief — I liked demonstrating that I knew how to be courteous, how far to stand off in conversation at first, to establish that I knew not to pry, or make unhelpful assumptions, or hover.

I could promise these caregivers a few hours of rest from their own work, as well as a refreshed mind untroubled by memory. Because I had no history with their loved one, I could not be hurt if they forgot me. I could hold everything lightly with them, and they with me.

At home, and with my own people, I am often guilty of hovering. Prying, too. But at work, I am granted relief from my own shortcomings, from my tiresome desire to control and supervise others, by the gracious deliverance of the professional mind. Clocking in to a shift felt like entering into a meditative state. I was very often relieved of the bondage of self, almost immediately and almost completely.

This experience has been unique and confined to this very particular kind of work. For example, I have never felt relieved of mental suffering when I used to clock in to wait tables or work as an assistant editor for a textbook company.