On Memory and Forgetfulness

 

I cannot remember who or where I heard/read it but it was said that Man is the only being that thinks in three modes, the past, the future and the present. Ruminants only think in the present. When there is predator lurking in the shadows a ruminant would flee. When it is safe again, it would continue grazing. All thoughts of danger forgotten. Only chewing and more chewing of cud. On the other hand Man would see danger in the past, the present and the future. We are on the look out for danger constantly from past, present and the future. This is especially true when you are a practitioner. You can’t help it. It is what you are trained for. But, the line between vigilance and mere worry is a thin one and the price is anxiety and/or hypertension.

We rush for the future but often we look back in the past hoping to not repeat the same mistakes, to avoid the hole we fell in once but in doing so we are blind of what is in front of us right now. Our children wanting our attention, maybe a bedtime story or two, a walk in the park. Our wives wanting no more than to hold hands, a hug (I think. Who knows what a woman wants, really) Our aging parents needing nothing more than our company. Our beat-up body wanting rest. Our tired minds begging for some activity other than work. We are prisoners of thoughts and worries of the future.

Ah, to hell with the future. The future is yet to be written, all we have is the present to live in, in preparation for the future. We often forget that. I often forget that. I write now not about the present or the future but of the past. About memories both good and bad. About the irony of remembering (for me at least).

I’ve been working my way through The Liar’s Club, A memoir by Mary Karr, poet, essayist and memoirist. Like most books I read, I came upon it entirely by accident while trawling through old yellowing books at my local Books for Better World. Wasn’t really looking for it but I knew of Mary Karr previously when I picked up Lit (by accident), also by her at The Curve’s Borders bargain bin almost a year earlier. Lit was such a blast to read so when I saw The Liars Club sitting there with its cover coming off, I had to get it. While Lit was about Mary’s attempts to get herself published, her marriage and its dissolution, her single motherhood and her battle with the bottle and her final grudging acceptance of Catholicism. The Liar Clubs was about Mary as a little girl growing up in Texas witnessing her parent’s slow drift and eventual separation and her mother’s gradual descent into alcoholism. Reading that, it made perfect sense. There was a morbid symmetry on why Mary turned out the way she did in Lit.

Having been more than halfway through The Liar’s Club reinforces my suspicion that bad, traumatic memories can be as sharp as knives and cuts just as real. Sometimes there is no helping it. They keep on replaying in your head no matter what you do until time and space (and maybe some help) wash them away. All we can do is learn from it and try, try to remind ourselves that it is in the past and not let it be the chain holding us back. We try. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we do not.

There are those who say that the trauma and pain you had suffered can be harnessed to drive you. Mary Karr certainly did. For the rest of us? Maybe. They say the same thing about anger being a great driving force. I have my doubts. One sure thing I know about anger is that it is tiring. But that is just me. I could be wrong. Maybe it is all about perspective, on how we choose to frame things, memories included.

Memories too can be our soothing balm, a warming presence deep within us when all seems cold, when you are at the lowest. Thinking of them reminds us for a brief moment that it is not all bad. That things have been okay once and will be okay again. Things like the feeling when we took our first bicycle ride with the training wheels off, listening to our grandfather’s jokes or the memory of our grandmother in her kitchen realm serving up dishes that fed generations, our day at the beach, our first date with our significant other, the memory of a teacher encouraging you to keep on reading, going on the stage for that school award, our goofy pet cat being stuck and finally un-stuck from the drain two sizes too small for him or a simple family dinner where all family members are present and where life was simpler.

Maybe that is why when we listen to tunes from our days of youth, we can to certain extent remember how it feels during those days. Maybe the heart remembers what the head can forget.

Memories can make or break you as a person but as powerful we would like to think it to be, it is at the same time fragile. Liable to be forgotten. Maybe due to old age or just plain passage of time where those who were there and remember are long dead. Then comes the question: Is forgetfulness a gift or a curse upon the living? The lawyer in me whispers: it depends (diam lah) but the vanilla old me does not really believe that to be the truth. I’ve seen what dementia had done to my grandmother before she passed away. From asking for my name and when I am to have children despite having my wife and two boys in tow every time and to constantly ask my mother to prepare lunch or dinner for my long dead Grandfather and yet, not once she ever forgot to ask if I have had my meal. Even as old age take you, some things you remember. Heartbreaking? To me to those who was there, certainly but to her?

Likewise with my late Grandfather (on my father’s side) who was a former copper. My uncles and aunts told me once that during his service despite his modest rank he was the go to person for PO’s (Prosecuting Officers) when it comes to criminal law. Towards the end of his life he was bedridden with the attendant tubes and bags, barely lucid. No longer recognizing anyone. When I came to visit after a plea in mitigation at the nearby state court (some suitor fighting at a coffee shop for his lady love’s honour. Accused family begged to differ. The lady was a known two-timer. The only time I was asked by the family to pray for maximum fine from court). I thought my grandfather could use a bit of conversation with only my aunt to talk to and so I told him I had just attended a matter that falls under Section 159 of the Penal Code, talked to him about the case. ‘’Tuk ingat tak Seksyen 159?’’ I asked him remembering what my uncles and aunts told me before. ‘’Gaduh kecil (affray)’’ he slowly answered.

When your body is no longer as it was used to be and all that fire within is gone all that is left to you would be your thoughts and memories. To swim in both the currents of past and the present at the same time, is that really a bad thing? I don’t know.

Sometimes I have problem remembering things I want to remember without reminders in my calendar (anniversaries, birthdays and school holidays, that damn speech or line of arguments) and yet the scary, embarrassing, painful, dumb shit I really want to forget remains stubbornly lodged in my head and I don’t even know why. Is that a human thing or is it just me? From my reading and/or listening to interviews of prominent judges and practitioners, most of them have prodigious memories. If I ever have the opportunity to talk to some of them I’d ask, do they have the same problem like mine; Forgetting what I was meant to remember and to remember things I’d rather forget?