A Fly on The Wood, May 31, 2013

The Mind
by Jim Murchison 
@JimMurchison

The mind is a curious thing. Learning lines for the play was way more difficult for me than it used to be. A couple of weeks after I finished doing Taming of the Shrew, I decided it might be fun to see how many of the lines I could remember. I initially had difficulty remembering the very first line because it is a short interjection. Once I remembered what line cued it, it popped in and I was able to run all my lines for the entire play for all four characters.

  

It made me think of the effects of dementia. There is very little history of dementia in my family. My mother at 92 is still one of the brightest women I know, everything still intact mentally.

I used to go visit my uncle when I was a boy and he would have an opera record playing, be watching a baseball game and reading the complete works of William Shakespeare; again.

My uncle Frank, before he died, couldn’t remember me, his wife or ever having lived in Montreal. He did however know Tiger Woods’ win total and could sing The Rain in Spain from My Fair Lady (and he would excitedly tell you that it was on TV, not realizing that he had been watching it steadily for eight days). He could also tell you who wrote almost any opera of the 19th or 20th century and possibly which tenor sang it at its premiere.   

I used to go visit my uncle when I was a boy and he would have an opera record playing, be watching a baseball game and reading the complete works of William Shakespeare; again. Now even though his mind wasn’t what it used to be later in life, he didn’t suffer from fear or anxiety as many people with dementia do. Although he didn’t know who most of his family were and the things that he did remember were trivial perhaps, they were the elements in his life that had brought him great joy and comfort.   

Maybe some day we will understand and be able to avoid the awful pain that dementia causes and maybe the key will be studying people who have trained their minds to remember vast quantities of things. In the meantime I just hope that I can remember at least a couple of things that I need to function and all the things that give me peace.