Emotional memory

The photo here may imply a darker mood than I'm really experiencing. I'm finishing up editing the graveyard photos I took the other day. I jacked up the contrast on this one and now I'm trying to decide if I've gone too far.

Going too far and reeling it back in is a pattern with which I have some familiarity.

It's early Spring and I found myself surprised by the seasonal depression that surprises me every year. Dad died the first week in May. Our good friend Diana died at the end of April. It seems that I conspire with myself to ignore these dates every year. What I notice is that I'm getting angry about things. My attitude becomes more negative. Many of you become more irritating. I don't suppose you'd notice that, being the way you all are, but I lack the patience to tolerate you that I might ordinarily have. So, I ask myself, in some moment of reflection, why I'm so grumpy and a little voice says "It's April, the cruelest month, the season of people wasting away." I realize that I'm dancing familiar steps in a dance that always seems to include a little surprise. Insight and self-delusion doing a tango in the new grass.

I had a physical this week and my doctor helps me manage my depression (actually she manages the treatment - I manage the depression). She went over the challenges in my life that she well knows contribute. How's your mother? How's family life? How much are you working? I tolerate this litany and for a moment realize that my "not that bad, really" approach falls short of the mark. All in all, things are going well. Along the line, though, we pick up a load of grief and loss, sadness that begs to be recognized even though we don't want to give up the time, ruin an otherwise beautiful day by giving in to sorrow.

It's Sunday, my day off. I go to see Mom in a few minutes in her comfortable Memory Care unit to bear witness to her entropy and titrate a little sorrow in what feels like a manageable dose, regular and small in the way that we build up immunity to bee stings or snake bites. It's not that bad. It's the end of a productive life, inevitable as . . . taxes.

I learned at my physical that I'm a little more than an inch shorter than I was before my accident. Now I'm just a little over 6 feet tall. My friend Chris cheerfully announced that we're all getting smaller from here on out "so it's just going to get worse." I was drinking his beer and so I allowed this impertinence. I would have been a lot shorter in a wheelchair.

I read recently that people with Alzheimer's Disease who can't remember anything from minute to minute still benefit from regular visits from loved ones. I know this is true. I still benefit as well. I remember things about Mom and about our lives together. I remember things about myself. The idea, I think, is that emotional memory is longer lasting than conscious memory. I know that when I was injured I didn't see Mom for quite a while. When I saw her again, she couldn't put her finger on it, but she seemed a little hurt . . . or perhaps not hurt, but aware that I had been gone. It could be my imagination, but she seems to be on a more even keel when I go regularly to see her, even though she forgets I'm there each time she closes her eyes.

After I visit Mom, I will work in the sun, in the yard, and bathe in some vitamin D. The answer to the emotional memory of long held sorrow is the sunny morning. Ah.