There was a long table placed in the hallway of my son's school last week. During the last week of classes, the teachers were attempting to re-unite student with their lost objects and clothing. When I passed it one morning I couldn't help wishing it was a magic lost and found table. If you touched it, the table would return something you had lost in the past: a plum silk hat I left in a hotel room in Lyon, a blue velvet scarf I left in a dining room in Saskatoon, or a box of makeup I left in a dust set of drawers in my room at the Saint Norbert's Arts Centre. Maybe it would return my great grandfather's ten gallon hat that my father speaks wistfully of. I might even retrieve that scratch and sniff book I received as a gift a few days before our house caught on fire, but I'd rather have the whole house returned. Supposed the table even returned objects you'd forgotten you'd owned, the truly ephemeral puzzle pieces of your past? Perhaps it would manifest a watch from high school or a paisley dress from elementary school, or a calendar that hung in your house when you were ten years old.
I'm afraid of losing things, and when I do misplace something I panic, my heart pounds in my chest, and I beat myself up for being so careless. I don't like carelessness. I am afraid of the black whole that is life, with objects, moments, events, and loved ones dissolving and entering the twilight zone of memory and forgotten dreams. I used to have an excellent memory, aural and visual. In high school my memory began to fail. You could say I lost it. I think it was the hormones that began to wash over my grey matter and turn my life into a battle with anxiety and confusion.
"Using three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the scientists found that otherwise healthy women with a history of depression had smaller hippocampal volumes than those who never had been depressed."
--Science Daily, June 1999
They say that the hippocampus is an important seat for memory--the lost and found table in our brain. In people who struggle with anxiety and depression, the hippocampus shrinks, and fewer items fit onto the table. It's as if sadness has eaten wormholes in my memory in order to save itself from remembering too much. Remembering too much can cause just as much pain as the loss of one's memory. There needs to be a balance of memories that are sifted out, and those details that need to be placed deep in the background of consciousness.
Friends are important to me because they help me to remember events that are dear to me. We write letters, share photos and create a web to catch the times we shared. It's the same with family: we obsessively record our journeys, vacations, and daily lives so that they can be learned from, celebrated, and passed on. Friends are also important in the art of forgetting the haunting memories you want relief from. "Let it go," we murmur to each other. It's time to move on." These are the major themes in my life--remembering, celebrating, and letting go. The fear of losing my memories haunts me, but I try to remember that memory is organic matter mixed with spirit matter and organic matter must decay in order to let the spirit breathe. As our brains slough off cells, our nervous system twitches itself on day by night, and our hearts beat out a rhythms of anxiety and comfort we remember and we forget in a mysterious cycle that has a magic of its own.
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