In this same patient way, my grandma taught me that while tomatoes and corn must also be twisted, you have to pinch green beans, and you can snap asparagus but only as long as you do it low and close to the base. I will never forget her life lessons in vegetable picking. Partly because they are skills I’ve repeated nearly every year in her garden and then my mom’s. But mostly because these are my most cherished memories of my grandma. These are also the memories I shared while choking back tears at her funeral two years ago.

 

I hadn’t planned to speak at her funeral. The pastor completely blindsided my cousins and I when he turned to us at the end of the service and asked if one of her seven grandchildren might share a memory. We exchanged panicked glances - not a single one of our parents had mentioned this request and we were all pretty sure that this pastor, who none of us had met until an hour before the service, was going off script.

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Everyone, including myself, was surprised when I, the youngest by eight years, approached the podium. I was moved not only out of love for my grandma and pity for my cousins, but out of frustration. So far, every memory of my grandma that had been shared was about her Alzheimer’s disease. The very disease that caused the loss of her memory, and subsequently her independence, then her personality, and finally her life was now robbing her of her legacy. I was mad because her final twelve years in a memory care facility should not ablate the woman, mother, and grandmother she was before her disease.

 

So, as I approached the sparse podium, I scrambled to organize my swirling thoughts into a semi-cohesive narrative. With emotions strangling my vocal chords, I told the story of how my grandma taught me to pick vegetables in her garden. I concluded my impromptu speech by tearfully begging the attendees, few of whom I actually recognized, to remember her not in a nursing home but in her garden.

 

It’s possible that I was only able to remember the woman she was before the Alzheimer’s because I hadn’t visited her at all in the past six years. It was too painful, so I avoided it, preferring to hold on to my warm memories of summer vegetables and games of Sequence rather than writing new memories of cold, unmemorable walls and one-sided conversations. I told the people who actually cared for her at the end to remember not the Gretchen Hollister they dressed and fed every day but the Grandma Hollister who once taught me to pick vegetables.

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But I am a hypocrite.

 

I wrote the story of my grandma’s Alzheimer’s into every single one of my personal statements for my graduate school applications this year. I wrote about how the devastation of a poorly understood disease inspired my future career in biomedical research. I wrote about how the feeling of helplessness inspired me to try to make a difference. But I did not write about the specifics. I did not write about how her once meticulously coiffed hair became flat and simple. I did not write about how a warm greeting dissolved into a mere glint of recognition in her bright blue eyes, or how even that minor acknowledgement eventually faded away. And I certainly did not write about summers spent picking vegetables.

 

I chose to simplify my grandma’s legacy down to just the name of her disease. I did the very thing I was determined to prevent when I spoke at her funeral.  Even though what I wrote was all true – her condition, among other things, led me to study the molecular basis of health and disease – I still felt cheap selling my memories for a shot at admissions.

 

My hypocrisy is made even worse by the fact that, based on my studies so far, science has very unsatisfactory things to say on the topic of memory. My molecular neurobiology course boils memory down to electrical signals, ions, receptors, and molecules like glutamate and dopamine. I don’t understand how miniscule and near instantaneous exchanges of molecules can become images, words, and emotions in my mind. Words like “potentiation” and “excitatory post synaptic potential” swirl around my head during class. I can’t make sense of how the same flow of charges that powers my phone also determines the storage of all of my life’s experiences.

 

And the cause of Alzheimer’s disease? Just accumulations of beta-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. Small little fragments of normal proteins that clump together inside and outside of neurons in just the right place can make a person forget how to be a person. I can’t comprehend my memories of my grandma’s dementia in these terms.

 

To make matters worse, the medical recommendations that stem from these molecular explanations seem almost laughably feeble. I’ve watched my mom consume walnuts by the handful after hearing a news report about their ability to slow the progression of the disease. She’s also religiously committed to 30 minutes of aerobic exercise a day for the same reason. That is, until the next study comes out. Or life gets too busy. Or she just forgets.

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Because that’s the thing: it’s normal to forget some things. It’s natural to walk into your room and forget your purpose for doing so, to have no clue what you ate for breakfast two days ago, or to blank on the word that’s on the tip of your tongue or the name of that one relative you hardly see. But it’s not normal to forget that your home is your home. It’s not normal to not remember which foods you love and which you detest. It’s not normal to lose sensical language altogether. And it’s not normal to fail to recognize your children as more than just friendly faces.

 

I can’t define the line between occasional forgetfulness and the onset of disease. My mom panics every time she loses her train of thought or forgets where she left her phone. The memory of the disease that robbed my grandma of her memory and its hereditary roots in our family haunts my mom, my sister, and I. The onset of dementia is a distant fear of mine, but for my mom it’s an immediate threat, lurking around the corner of every additional birthday. Even though I reassure my mom that her forgetfulness still falls within the normal range, I don’t know the distinction between a scattered brain and a demented brain. I don’t even remember when my grandma’s condition crossed the line of laughable goofs, like calling broccoli “asparagus,” to a disease that required the 24/7 care only available in a nursing home. I wonder if I was too young to form a concrete memory of when that imaginary line was crossed or if that line even exists at all.

 

My introductory psychology course provided the most compelling analysis regarding memory formation and recall. Essentially, the more you bring a piece of information to the forefront of your mind, the easier it will be to remember that information later on. But here’s the catch: every time you remember that memory, it becomes a little less accurate. That’s because with each renewed recall, you’re not actually thinking of the original experience but instead you’re remembering the memory based on how you most recently remembered it.

 

Based on that theory, it’s completely possible that the memory about picking a cucumber I started this essay with is entirely fiction by now. But is a memory only valid if it’s true? Saying “Well, the way I remember it…” is a nice way of covering your butt just in case the information you subsequently provide is later found to be inaccurate.  The question “do you remember…?” is generally a much lower stakes question than “do you know…?” Our memories aren’t expected to be perfect, but that doesn’t make them any less powerful.

 

There’s something to be said for how a memory makes you feel. Your birthday, summer vacation, home – each of these words probably triggered an emotion as you read them. But, if I asked you to write down the exact memory that led to your emotional connection with each word, you would probably struggle to pinpoint the specifics. Not because you forgot, but because the feeling triggered by each of these words is less of an exact memory and more of an amalgamation of past experiences unified by a shared context and overall emotional effect.

 

So, when I read the word “grandma,” I have the choice of remembering the feeling of visiting her in a retirement home after she was debilitated by dementia or the feelings associated with summer evenings in her carefully tended garden. Neither memory is completely accurate, so in a roundabout way they are both equally right. I know which one I want to hold on to, even if the other remains an unwanted squatter in my fears.

 

The idea that we can choose which of our memories to hold on to is unexpectedly empowering. Our brains naturally filter out irrelevant information, choosing not to waste precious storage space on the specifics of the mundane. By making conscious decisions of what to ignore and what to remember, we can shape which memories remain relevant. Maybe there’s some truth to the adage “out of mind, out of matter.” The thought of your old romantic ex probably doesn’t trigger the same tears that it may have right after the breakup. At some point you probably stopped seeing reminders of them, stopped pulling up their memory, and thus actively made them less relevant to your current life.

 

In this way we have the potential to re-write our personal histories. After seeing my grandma’s loss of memory result in her loss of self, I began to realize how inextricable our past is from our present. Imagine the power that purposefully shaping your memories could give you. Instead of remembering my failures, my awkward blubbering, and my disappointments, I could prioritize the moments of success, grace, and joy. Maybe instead of fearing forgetfulness I could harness its power to build a happier history and more confident present.  

 

I don’t have control over every experience in my life. And no matter how many walnuts I eat, I also don’t control (or even fully understand) the molecular mechanisms that determine the functions of my brain. But I can control the power that my memories hold over me. I can choose to remember the grandma who taught me to pick vegetables.

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