Maya Talbott
Lost in Memory
The Beginning
When I was a little girl, I dreaded bedtime. Not because I wanted to stay up later playing games and exploring—my parents gave up on enforcing a scheduled bedtime when I was very young, realizing early on that my night owl character was as much a part of my nature as was my love for the ocean and my compulsion to doodle on everything. I dreaded bedtime because I was afraid. Afraid of the monsters and strangers and mysteries that lived in the dark. Afraid that I would never fall asleep because my brain was too loud, too active. I feared bedtime because I feared the unknown, not knowing that the sleep I was evading was the master of my knowledge, the scribe that would translate yesterday’s unknown into tomorrow’s truth. A day’s worth of memories being stored in my subconscious, shaping the way I saw the world around me, and myself.
As I grew older, and especially after becoming aware of the shadow of responsibility, assignments and to-do lists, I began to relish the minutes spent laying in bed, eyes shut, teetering on the edge of sleep in a blissfully calm, schedule-less, unburdened state. A time when no work could be done, no task checked off, only guiltless time with myself. And so I’d spend those minutes reminiscing, revisiting favorite memories, unanswered questions, images I wanted to solidify in my mind. It was these moments of reflection that began to shape me—they shaped my prejudices, my insecurities, my desires, my relationships and my aspirations. To remember was both a subconscious action and a choice. Like breathing, it was often an innate, hidden action that formed the lens through which I saw the world around me. And like sitting down and devoting time to reading a newspaper, it was a choice to explore and to learn, with my identity and my surroundings as the only subjects. It wasn’t until I started exploring my evolving relationship with my grandfather, a late-stage Alzheimer’s patient, that I began to realize how much I had been taking my ability to remember for granted, both as an innate action and a choice.
Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Perhaps more frightening, however, is that the symptoms of the disease rob us of one of our most unique, personal and valuable possessions—our past. My introduction to Alzheimer’s disease came from my relationship with my grandfather. My grandfather, a 94-year-old living with severe Alzheimer’s disease, began exhibiting significant symptoms of Alzheimer’s over a decade ago. As a child I often spent days at a time with my grandparents, staying with them during weeks when my parents were both traveling for work. They would drop me off with Grandma and Grandpa, leaving me with memories of French bedtime stories, feeding the geese on the Delaware River and losing my first tooth in my grandparents’ dimly lit, dust-scented house in Pennsylvania. Years spent in the company of my grandparents built me a reserve of memories surrounding our family’s traditions, homes, holidays and characters. These years, despite their pleasantly repetitive nature, forced me to constantly develop and mature my relationship with memory loss, as well as my relationship with my grandfather. Because of my relationship with my grandparents, I was in a position to see my grandfather’s disease progress from infancy to grumpy seniority, and saw the way he interacted with others and the world around him mutate slowly and dramatically. I puzzled at the memories that seemed to be permanently preserved, in contrast with those which faded in and out, those which were engulfed by others, and those which disappeared all together.
Following are excerpts of a short story about my grandfather’s life with Alzheimer’s. The first excerpt is from the perspective of my grandfather, as he ponders his past and his relationship with his wife, his primary caretaker. The second is from the perspective of my ten-year-old self, observing the changes in my grandfather’s behavior during the early stages of his disease.
Excerpts from a short story titled “Angel”
Pierre searches for imperfections in this wife of his, as she forces another spoonful of cheese-soaked zucchini onto his plate. He believes she is taunting him with her uncalculated spontaneity and attention to detail, liberated from recipes and adding spices to each dish that he will never be able to taste because of his age. He is sure she has placed the cup of salt at his place at the head of the table to mock him for the tablespoons he must add to his meals to provide him with only a diminishing sense of flavor. She cooks and cleans and writes and prays with a simple pleasure in the routines that are only hers. He pokes fun at her cooking, hailed by their brown-nosed son-in-law as better than any other woman’s.
“Raymonde, didn’t you serve this at lunch?”
“Mais non, Pierre, you forget! Nous avons mangé le broccoli.” You forget, she says. He shakes his head, feigning resignation as he hears this accusation from his wife everyday. She has no conception of how much he remembers, however. He remembers the smell of manure worked into the soil of the farms he passed each morning on his walk to grammar school. He remembers the expression on his mother’s face the last time he saw her before he left home for the war. He remembers the blue eyes of the German stranger who saved his life just before those Croatian soldiers were going to execute him. He remembers the soft-center and perfectly tanned crust of the first baguette he had after weeks of starvation in the German occupation camp. He remembers the field of daisies he walked through with Raymonde on their first date, her mocking imperfections, he is sure, were hidden by her petite build and forgiving, gentle gaze.
She takes his plate, as she always does, and brings it to the sink. Cleaning his pocketknife of Pecorino Romano cheese, he places the knife into the right pocket of his ironed khakis and crumples the dirtied napkin in his left hand. While Raymonde is in the basement retrieving the yogurt she will serve for dessert, along side a pot of decaf coffee and a cup of brown sugar, Pierre walks to the kitchen and opens the cabinet beneath the already emptied sink. There, in the trash, lie the stalks of several unfinished pieces of broccoli, the only part of the vegetable neither Pierre nor their dog Charlie, will eat. You forget, she says. As he wonders what to trust if not his own memory, he continues to search for imperfections in this wife of his.
________________________________________
Have I been here before, Pierre thinks to himself, and then asks his granddaughter.
“Yeah, Grandpa. You and Grandma were here for Christmas.” She often wonders why she can’t help but use a condescending tone when addressing her grandfather.
“No,” he says in a gristly whisper, stretching out his “o” to accentuate his incredulity. Maya shakes her head, giggling silently.
Pierre turns his attention to the dog on the end of the leash he holds, allowing himself to be absorbed by the hunt the dog expresses in his bent stance. Pierre’s eyes follow the point of the dog’s nose out to an erect, grey squirrel, standing on two legs, its head twitching as if aware that it is being watched, but unsure of who or what is watching it.
“Regarde, look how he watches the squirrel,” Pierre says to his granddaughter as he sets the leash down on the broken gravel sidewalk. The ground is wet with hot rain, covered in petals from the cherry blossom trees that surround the park. The rain has forced them down from the fragile, pink canopies they formed in the trees overhead. In a couple days the remaining petals will form their own precipitation, floating lightly to the ground. They will resign from their reign in the hearts of lovers and families who, through the soft tickle of the falling petals, reminiscent of peach fuzz brushing their lips, will find hope for new beginnings and perseverance in the face struggle.
Maya climbs on the tips of her toes to grab a low branch, full with untouched flowers, and drags it to her face. She doesn’t realize that her eyes are closed.
“Grandpa, you have to smell this. It’s so refreshing.” The eager ten-year-old holds the branch in his direction.
“Oh, Grandpa cannot smell anything anymore. He is getting to be an old man.” He speaks of himself as a distant idea, a fictional character he resents and pities. For as he walks around Wooster Square with his granddaughter, he feels his calf muscles flex and relax, his hip joints circle forward and back, with the same smooth strength he felt when marching the foothills of France during the war. With his senses dwindling he sees no new beginnings in his future, and inherently refuses the self-pity that accompanies acknowledgement of his current struggle. He’s been through worse.
As he eyes the crumpled pink petals beneath his brown, leather loafers, he begins to feel a strange sensation of recognition and familiarity. He’s walked this square path before, passed by these trees and tasted the same wet air, fresh with spring rain.
“Have I been here before?” he asks his granddaughter.
“Yes, Grandpa. Last Christmas, with Grandma.” She makes a conscious effort to sound less condescending this time, to share in his surprise.
“Hm.” He exhales, struggling to absorb his surroundings, consciously inscribing the scene into his memory, looking for a new beginning and rejuvenation for his recollection. His strong steps and steady heartbeat taunt his entangled brain. His head stings like a light bulb flickering on and off just before burning out.
“Charlie!” shouts Maya, as the dog’s leash whooshes out from beneath their feet, the animal’s mind contently focused on only the hunt.
The Installation
As with most Senior Reflections, my project and my image of the final product transformed throughout the school year, adapting to my own needs and the demands of the artwork and exhibition space. A large element of my project that remained untouched, however, was the atmosphere I sought to create. When I began this project, I knew I wanted to explore a medium that was new to me: video art. This decision was based on my natural draw towards the medium, as well as my passion for photography. So I enrolled in an introductory video art class. However, I always envisioned creating something more than just a video—I wanted to create an experience. I wanted to facilitate an immersion into the life of an Alzheimer’s patient. In order to do so, I wanted to create a space that surrounded the audience, darkening their peripheral scenery so that the only light stimulating their eyes and minds was that of my video. I also wanted to have my video looping, highlighting the torturesome cyclical and predictable qualities of Alzheimer’s that can be so frustrating to those inflicted, as well as their caretakers—the repeated questions and realizations. As I reached the final stages in the video composition process, I kept in mind the looping nature of the video, watching it from different starting points, trying my best to detach myself from the pre-existing notion of a plot and progression that I had already developed. I was so happy, then, to be able to create an immersive space for the video to be looping in, a structure built in the final hours with the help of my father. Although not exactly what I had conceived of fall quarter, it was perhaps better, bringing the audience close to the experience, allowing them to sit at ease in the darkness with only the video to focus on. Plus, it allowed me invaluable time spent building and playing with my dad, something I haven’t been able to do since I began my college career. Included below are a couple pictures of the installation, mostly for my own sake, since the installation will likely live the rest of its life in pieces in my garage.
The Process
The video portion of my installation went through several mental iterations and sketched plot-maps before I actually began compiling and editing video footage. My brainstorming included visions of daily routines slowly disintegrating—a movie more unnerving than Groundhog Day. It included imagery of light stains on the eyeballs, a metaphor for the permanent mark every single experience, every interaction, relationship and dream, has upon our perception of the world around us, as well as our own identity. Finally, it included ideas of large casts, giant Lazy Susan’s, and medical imagery of MRI and PET scans of the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s. While all of this brainstorming was constructive for the realization my final vision, many of the specific ideas I had early on were not included in the final product. For some components, this was because of a lack of access or time. It is my somewhat unfortunate understanding now, however, that at least some of the time spent imagining and sketching and work-shopping these ideas, was time utterly wasted.
After taking Video Art I Autumn quarter of this year, I learned something very important about my own creative process: I, often to my own detriment and the detriment of my art, am a planner. Every video project I’ve started this past year has begun with a vivid image, a plan of how I wanted my final product to turn out. The only projects that I would consider successful, however, were those where I let go of my plan and began to play. Sometimes it took starting completely over, or sitting at my desk watching an hour of Vimeo videos until I had found a dozen videos that spoke to me for some undefined reason. I would take pieces of these videos and shuffle them with footage of my own, as well as audio from a completely different source. Every once in a while I would feel myself slipping back into planning mode, and although one could imagine it’d be easy to let yourself play when it comes to art, creating completely in the present was something that took a lot of effort and courage on my part. Once I was able to let myself discover the art, however, it was incredibly rewarding. I have always loved creative writing, and have taken several classes, mostly to permit myself the time to devote solely to sitting down with a pencil and notebook. I never felt completely fulfilled by my creative writing classes, however, because as soon as the assignments were given, my creative mind reverted back to planning mode. While creative writing was always my therapy, free-writing my meditation, writing assignments often left me with writer’s block while I searched for a plan, feeling frightened to write the way I knew best. So when producing my video art piece for my Senior Reflection, it was a proud and rewarding experience to find that not only was I able to let go of my plans, but that my best work was produced when I did so.
As I’m saying all this I’m realizing that I’ve reverted back to my free-writing self, excited by the freeing experience that was my Senior Reflection, and most likely producing a tangle of run-on sentences and comma over-use. Oh well. As a pre-med student at Stanford University, where planning is necessary for success and checkpoints are set-in-stone, the proof of the power of spontaneous creation that came from my Senior Reflection is something I won’t soon let go of.
The Video
One of my favorite things about my video, and perhaps the single element that frightened me most when considered its presentation, was the fact that so much was left up to the interpretation of the viewer. I felt comforted by the fact that I was confident in the confusion, frustration and loss that the audience would feel, and the cyclical nature and repetition that was evident. But the actual content, both visual and auditory, left much up to the interpretation of the viewer. I am both happy and at peace with this characteristic of the video. Because I was so entrenched in the piece by its completion, however, I felt each portion very deeply, and attached my own specific interpretation to each scene, which I will discuss below.
For those of you reading this reflection without having watched the video yourselves, feel free to watch it here before reading my own interpretation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0qX84m3KE0
My Journey through “Lost in Memory”
The ticking, a reminder of the progressive nature of the disease, and the fact that the passing of time is often what takes the lives of those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Maintaining a sense of time might also provide them with a sense of sanity, when their past begins to crowd their present and their present begins to fall apart without the support of their past.
The field at dusk, a symbol of the favorable memories that will eventually disappear—the image of the peaceful field fading out with the overwhelming presence and confusion of time. Also, a symbol of the clarity that is still somewhat accessible during the early stages of the disease.
My most favorable memories gone, unable to recognize the new and the familiar, forced to relive the difficult. Reoccurring themes in this piece, these are what I found to be the three most haunting experiences associated with Alzheimer’s that I sought to explore. While the disease is frustrating, confusing and limiting in many realms, I was most struck by these three areas of loss. As someone who so relishes the time spent revisiting past joys, what a horrible experience I imagine it would be to lose that freedom. As someone who is no longer recognized by her grandfather, I see the frustration, distrust and embarrassment in his eyes when his fails to recognize the faces of his grandchildren, children and close friends. And finally, when forced to tell my grandfather once more that his mother is dead when he is convinced he has seen her in sipping coffee in the living room, I feel sorrow and pity when he is forced to relive past grief and loss.
The red emergency light, of symbol of the imminent emergencies, the repeated reminder that sometimes things can get worse without ever getting better.
The woman, reflecting on memories past, experiencing the many symptoms of Alzheimer’s, carrying us through the video in a series of clips that form the closest thing to a “plot” that this piece has.
Memories, flashes of family, expressions, sensations, trips—some memories chopped up and shuffled with others. The memories we choose to see, those that surprise us, those that stay, and those we can’t hold on to.
A memory fades and returns and fades again. An image of the woman’s husband and their two children, a “most favorable memory” that she seeks to preserve and spend more time with. She struggles to maintain the vision, with some success at first. Eventually, however, less-pleasant but more present memories may overtake the favorable ones.
A test for early-stage Alzheimer’s, a visual exercise in which an individual is presented with two identical images. A high-speed camera traces the path of their eyes, represented in my video by a circular window that is exploring the images. The camera records the time the individual spends exploring each image. When the images are identical, all individuals will spend on average an equal amount of time exploring each image. When one of the images is changed to that of a different object, however, healthy individuals not inflicted with Alzheimer’s will spend more time looking at the new image. Patient’s exhibiting signs of Alzheimer’s will spend a more evenly distributed amount of time exploring each image, unable to recall the memories and perception of the first image that they had previously made. In addition, this portion of the video includes audio of a verbal test for Alzheimer’s that is commonly employed in clinic, a test in which the patient is asked to repeat a short sentence directly after the doctor. Finally, the images being explored by the patient with Alzheimer’s are blurry and dim, as many patients with Alzheimer’s experience a dimming of their vision, as well as a loss of peripheral eyesight. In addition, the audio is superimposed with sounds of background voices and static, sounds characteristic of the auditory hallucinations many Alzheimer’s patients experience.
We return to the image of the woman, highlighting the fact that her intentional reflections are being interrupted, and that she is quickly losing control of her conscious memory and ability to reminisce. The second sequence of memories is cloudy and patchy. Blank spaces emerge when she searches for a specific vision, failing to hold on to anything familiar for too long.
Images of children that were once familiar and faces of loved family members now seem like “pretend,” a sequence that speaks to me of the frightening inability to recognize the familiar and the new. This loss of familiarity then transitions into a sequence of frustration and fear, highlighted by both the visual and auditory components of the film, hallucinations worsening the confusion.
“I want to get the hell out of all of it.” A hint of my personal exploration of whether Alzheimer’s patients seek an escape. And if they do, where do they seek refuge? Are they ever successful? And if so, is their refuge found in portions of their memories and identities that remain untouched, or is refuge found in the arms of a loved one, a familiar song, or one’s own bed?
The peace that was one’s most favorable memories flashes back momentarily, in the image of the field at dusk, and we hold on to it as long as possible, as our identity and sense of our own time and place in the world are slowly lost.
As the image disintegrates, we revisit painful memories, forgotten and relived, confusing yet still difficult. Time becomes louder and more prominent, and as time disintegrates, nothing makes sense, and we begin to lose ourselves.
Ocean waves flow in and out, a predictable, periodic motion, with a cyclical nature similar to that of the video, but with a much more calming nature. Birds are flying free, but just out of reach, as one can no longer focus on or find what was once so calming. Everything’s dimmer, everything’s unfamiliar and strange, and we’re left with just a tiny hole filled with clarity, small circles of hope that our eyes and minds gravitate towards before everything goes dark.
And the cycle repeats.
The Peace Lives On
What most audience members didn’t know about my piece is that the soft singing at the end, serving as the audio portion of the black and white beach scenes, is the voice my grandfather, humming a song that is his constant companion in this stage of his disease. While singing or humming is an activity reported of many late-stage Alzheimer’s patients, their motivation for song remains unknown. I’ve imagined that it might be an effort to block out the background voices and noises that he has described hearing. Or perhaps it is a repeated firing of a specific set of neurons, a consequence of the physiological symptoms of the disease, forcing him to continue singing the same melody. Or perhaps my grandfather, at 94 years old, is preparing to say goodbye, as he once told my grandmother when he was still able to express himself, that he was humming traditional funeral songs from his home country of Serbia. Regardless, I believe he has found a sense of peace in his melodies, as have I, through seeing the ability of a dwindling mind to produce something so beautiful and calming despite the fear and confusion that surround him.
While my piece ended up being relatively eerie, and perhaps even morbid, it might be a surprise to others that I believe my grandfather’s experience with Alzheimer’s has had several silver linings. For example, there have been many actions of his past that, when reminded of them, he refuses to accept, shaking his head “no” in disgust and disbelief. My grandfather, once a very stern and severe man, has become a gentle and loving grandfather, father and husband, expressing appreciation, love and vulnerability more openly than he ever has. And finally, throughout his struggle with Alzheimer’s, his ability to find joy and confidence through making others laugh with his witty commentary and playful nature has remained untouched.
I want to end this reflection with a quote from my grandfather. Now rapidly loosing his ability to speak and form coherent sentences, my grandfather uttered this poetic phrase through a soft cry to my younger brother this past month when listening to some traditional ukulele on my brother’s computer, a device my grandfather refers to as “hocus pocus.”
“If you have ears, have tears.”
When my brother shared this experience with me, I did have tears, for my grandfather’s message spoke to me on so many levels. It spoke of the ability of art to heal, clarify and calm. It spoke of the power to art to connect two humans, even if their ability to communicate otherwise is largely limited. It spoke also to the invincible voice of emotion, and the power of sensation that lives immortal under the reign of creative expression. Finally, it spoke to some of the core values I hold dearest, in both my personal and professional relationships—the principle of compassion and the power of listening, to connect, to serve, and to create, throughout our lives. These are the principles that may be applied to caretakers, mentors, parents, and friends, principles that I will hold close in my professional pursuit of a medical degree, and in my relationships with both loved ones and strangers. Through reflecting on these words, on the experience of defining oneself and of understanding one’s past, I have come to realize that these principles—principles of compassion, vulnerability, openness and creativity—should be regarded as an essential element of every human’s identity, becoming as much a part of human nature as are one’s past and one’s memories.