Memory can be an elder's most exquisite gift. It allows you to have
roses in winter, lost youth in your heart, instant antidotes to your
current fears. The first and cruelest infliction of Alzheimer is when
our memories get sucked out of our lives.
When we're young [there
are 3 billion people on the planet now under 25] memories are accessed
easily, for we have less to remember. When we're old [the number of
octogenarians has never been greater] recent memories may be slower, yet
distant ones can be stunningly clear.
So how best do we -- young and old alike -- lock our best memories into a safe accessible place?
Researchers
at the University of Edinburgh tested the question with a group of
healthy volunteers between the ages of 60 and 90. They found the best
way to best store our best memories is: "...by simply shutting our eyes
and relaxing after seeing or learning something new."
Oh really!
Did we need a campus research program to conclude the obvious? A far
more compelling study would have been: Where do our memories go when we
die? Yes, of course, I understand dead is dead. I further understand the
materialist philosophy that once the brain terminates, so do all its
memories. However, isn't there a bolder way to address this issue: Is
matter all that matters in our lives? I think not!
Memories live
on beyond the grave. In a hundred ways. In the albums and photos and
memorabilia carefully left behind in that home where other brains pick
up their cadence and carry them further. There is the spouse...the
children...the family, friends and community...even the haulers hired to
empty the place. You see those memories live past the wake, beyond the
grave, into that enormous cosmic soup of energy that began bubbling the
day after Eden.
If there is a God, he remembers. If there is no God, the cosmos remembers. Nothing dies forever.
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