Dismemory

October 8, 2018 and fall is here in the form of an 85 degree day. A few leaves are scraping across the highway stirred by traffic wind. The sun shine is at angle that masks its summer intensity. Along the roads, scattered trees are in flames with bunches of leaves already red and gold.
Today I will attend calling hours for a friend from school and work. I remember his wry sense of humor. Never any meanness. Although I didn't see him often in recent years, he was always there and is now one more empty space in my heart. If we continue to grow, we will let other friends fill those places. What do we do when we are 95 and outlive our lifelong friends?  Does the heart shrink and wrinkle like our old bodies?

I have a new word today. Dismemory. Definition: an occurrence of remembering events that are not your own. Recall of someone's story but putting yourself as the main character.
 This happens as we age and fill our brains with family, friend and work stories. Hearing and telling over the years is saved as part of our history. As we recount an incident we fairly attribute it to the author. But as all the stories collide and overlap, the brain can pull that jumble into a new memory that lets us make it our own.

My grandmother told me stories about long gone family members which I have recorded on paper and internally. I am still able to separate them from myself. Over the years through genealogy I have found those stories common to distant cousins. We know Aunt Rainey by her love for jewelry and Great grandfather Brice as a Confederate soldier who had his last child at 76. But like the old telephone game, the audience adds bits and pieces to every telling until the stories disagree. Brice becomes a Union soldier because our family never fought for slavery and states rights. And it is not common for anyone to father a son at 76.
When do we trust the storyteller? And our own memory?

In my dad’s family, we are descended from Native Americans with the surname Sizemore. There is documented proof to my 3x great grandfather George who had 55 people claim him as their father. This is on the Internet. His father is referred to as George "All" Sizemore but no proof is recorded. Numerous stories exist of the Sizemore/NA connection. Occasionally a generous researcher will post a picture of that ancestor who lived before photography. We protest but the story sounds better than proof.
We need to listen to stories and decide if they are true.
In dismemory, the teller is convincing and believes what he is sharing. The author of the incident can question himself or the teller. Or just let it go. The story ends.

Dismemory is the sadness of lost thoughts and names when we can still fake a presence in the conversation by using random stories. It is the beginnings of Alzheimer's when real thoughts and instruction are tossed like the Yahtzee dice trying to find a match. You get what comes out of your cup. Sometimes you only roll 2 ones, a score low in points. That's when you call your sister Jan when her name is really Leslie. A laugh. A brush off. Soon you don't know Jan or Leslie. The phone becomes the remote and you watch the same channel all day until your daughter visits and explains once again how each works. You don't understand the difference because the phone no longer rings. Memories fade and wrinkle like our aging hearts. We do not care for things in life as we melt back to God from whence we came.