Friday 12 October 2012

Reminiscence Bump

'The reminiscence bump is the tendency for older adults to have increased recollection for events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood. Individuals can generally recall a disproportionate number of autobiographical memories from this period.

The reminiscence bump occurs between the ages of 10 and 30 years old where memory storage increases during times of change in self and in life goals.'

Taken from the great and glorious, occasionally dubious (hopefully not in this instance) Wiki P.


I seemed to experience the downward slope of this bump in my early twenties. I can remember sitting in a university kitchen, during the cold, clear light of the early hours of an English morning, birds calling through the crisp grey, discussing earnestly (and, admittedly, drunkenly) that I didn't feel things as keenly these days. That my emotions were muted, that my memories of more recent times were blurry, that my heart no longer felt as though it would split my ribs apart when the music played. I bemoaned my progress over the reminiscence bump and wailed that everything from this point forward would be lost in a fog of ageing and meaninglessness. And yes, yes . . . I was (am) fairly insufferable.

My voice caught a little as I quoted Antoine de Saint-Exupery. In a replica of the wobbly voice I used to listen to on a stretched cassette tape of the 1980s.

'So I fumble along as best I can, now good, now bad, and I hope generally fair-to-middling.
In certain more important details I shall make mistakes, also. But that is something that will not be my fault. . . . . Perhaps I am a little like the grown-ups. I have had to grow old.'

Because I thought I was a grown up.
Bwah ha ha ha.
Oh dear.
Poor, drunken, stupid, young me.

***

I've been thinking a great deal about Merry's recent post here. The legacy.

I think that the door that links my life in the here and now of 2012 to my life in August to December 2008 is permanently ajar. It is never entirely shut. But it is never fully open either. I peer around. I take a quick look and then I run away. But I keep going back. To take another peep. Just in case something pops back in, another memory of her perhaps?

The recollections of my own, brief and brutal reminiscence bump are full of holes where some sort of peculiar shut down occurred, things that I probably don't actually want to remember have been replaced by an absolute blank. And those months have been revisited so very often that I know I have decorated them, that I undoubtedly hidden bits from myself, that I have embellished and embroidered and lied and deceived. Unintentionally. The delusions of the defeated.

I could tell you a few things for sure.

The pattern of the mural on the wall on the back corridor of an infrequently used exit from the NICU, the handwriting on the call button for Jessica's ward, the curl of the hook of the coat stand, the smell of the parents' shower room, the tone of the voices of the women who worked next door, the skin of the consultant doctor.

And so I am haunted by randomness, by these disconnected images that ping about in my brain, when nothing else occupies it. This is why I try so desperately to cram it full of . . . anything going. I'm on season four of nineteen of America's Next Top Model. Oh yes.

But when Tyra and the girls are gone.
They sneak back in.
These small certainties, the pattern on the incubator cover, the scent of the hospital canteen.
I know this much is true.
And the rest?
It's anybody's guess.

***

The birth of my daughters seemed to rip all my memories away and cast them adrift. The past and the future. And I find myself marooned on a small stretch of time. Where I can't seem to connect with my own past and everything since seems a little like a dream.

I look back to the young woman that I once was. The woman who wanted her ribs to split open with music. Little did she know it would take more than that. And that you can walk around with your ribs splayed and nobody will even notice. Melodramatic sigh.

And those memories. Those treasured memories of the reminiscence bump that the majority find so accessible and vivid. Mine? They don't feel as though they are anything to do with me. Bump schump.

I know that I decided this and that. Read this book. Loved that man. Thought I had this friend for the rest of my life. Believed I stood for this or for that. Learnt these facts. Indubitably I did. I have some pieces of paper that state that I must have known something, at some point. Someone who looks a lot like me, sounds a lot like me, DID do those things and reach those conclusions.

But that person who I had so carefully spent twenty nine years constructing looks like a ghost. I look at her and think, 'hmmm facile much? Think about things much? Idiot much?'

And now I am almost scared to attempt to make a start on another persona. Because it just seems like an utter waste of time when I'll be tearing her down, burning her to the ground in another thirty years or so. And then I may only have one more shot left. If I'm lucky. So I'm scared to even try.

Wary of being faced down by sixty year old me. Sneering 'Idiot much?'

But, like it or not, wanting to or not, a new person is emerging from the ruins of me aged twenty nine and one quarter.

Perhaps Jill A. overestimated me when we talked about returning to a second adolescence? Perhaps I overestimated myself?

I guess that I am now, effectively, four years old. Having being reborn at roughly the same time as my daughters. On either the 26th, or the 29th, of August. I'm never sure if we all arrived together or if I re-struggled into the world as Georgina left it.

No wonder Jessica and get along so well and disagree so violently at times. We both want to play on the iPad, we both want to be feed and comforted and warmed. We are both learning, or re-learning, the laws of social interaction. Don't bite. Don't shout. Don't say what you really think.

We both don't quite know what we are doing.  Not yet.

Sorry Jessica. You didn't get a twin but, hey, here's your mother. The secret toddler. Trying to coax herself into some kind of coherent adult format. Filling in for Georgina.

Who seems to have got it right first time.

***

And memories of afterwards seem strange too.

Perhaps it because I am older?
Perhaps it is because I am a mother?

It all seems to rush past and I'm still baffled. The children sprout and stretch, like a fast motion film of plant growth in a nature documentary. I seem to stagnate but I know that can't really be the case. It's just a terribly slow kind of growth, even in fast motion. Achingly slow.

The years slither past and I'm still by the doorway, peering back to that place that seems to have changed everything.

The book I've just finished reading had a recurring theme.
"You just don't get it do you Tony?"
In this instance, I'm with Tony.

Because I just don't get it. The book. Or anything else much.
Perhaps that is the point?
That there isn't anything too get.
Because life isn't like a novel.
It's messy and incomplete and inane.
Full of things like eating breakfast and long, long stretches of boredom.
And mysterious things like babies who die and accidental injuries and relationships that disappear.
Events whose echoes seem to hang in the ether long after the breakfasts and boredom have gone.
Those things that lurk behind doors that never quite seem to be entirely shut.

I open up the hard drive of my old computer. And there's this photograph. Of my mother, me and Jessica. This time that seems to have shaken up everything and everyone and every single fact that I so foolishly thought that I understood. Sent me spinning backwards.

Through the permanently ajar door.















24 comments:

  1. I've been absent for blogs for a while now. Something has shifted in me. Well that's not entirely true, I have been reading, just not commenting, but that's still not like me.
    Anyway what I want to say is this - I get you. I had to comment here today, because this just spoke to me, completely on my level. And hey, maybe I am a snooty four year old as well, totally and utterly reborn when my own daughter was born dead.
    Thank you for saying what you do. Always.
    xo

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    1. Oh Hope's Mama. I miss you but . . . that something that has shifted . . . I hope it is a good thing, a lighter thing?
      I do often feel four years old, just very confused. Disconnected from the person that I once was and not particularly well connected to the person that I've been ever since. One thing is certain though, things shift, we change, whether we want to or not. So I'm optimistic that it will get better. Or, at least, different? xo

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  2. As always, so well done Catherine

    I feel like I've lost something in myself. It wasn't just my first born that was removed from my life on that oddly mild late February day. But as the days and weeks followed - I just started to feel this very familiar part of me slip away. It wasn't instant. But over a few months rather, I was unrecognizable to myself. That effortless sense of self that just existed in everything I did, thought, participated in just started to fade. I was all brand new in this dull, tarnished new casing.

    It's now been 7 and a half months. I'm begging myself to not become depressed. I'm newly pregnant again, and have to remind myself that there is still a future to live for. To be me for. But I can't flip the switch just yet. Or ever? There is no going back. And this rediscovery has me facing a brand new loss. A challenge which I can't quite leave the dramatics out of. "but he's DEAD. He'll ALWAYS be GONE". I wish it were just that, that I had to let rest in peace.

    Its this. ... Who am I now? What do I want out of this new life? What is there to want that I can actually attain? Crickets. 'wake up HAG! Make something of this present! Bloody hell, I'm getting exhausted prompting your every move!'. The old me still tries to construct something out of this shadow of a life that has pathetically unfolded after realizing it wasn't just the boy that was lost.

    What you said made perfect sense. Good Lord, it's the truth. What else am I to expect from a 7 month old?

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    1. That is exactly it, that sense of self that used to be automatic, that was done without thinking or reflecting, starts to dissipate. And one morning I woke up and thought to myself, 'I have absolutely no idea who I am anymore.'

      I also hear crickets sing when I question what it is that I actually DO want. Because most often all I can still think of is that I want her. I want her back. But, at the moment, I just want to see my little ones grown up and independent and happy. That's all. And I worry that my lack of ambition for myself will just drain them dry. Poor little mites.

      Veronica, there is certainly still a future to live for. There truly is. And I know that it will never be what you wanted but it will be. . . something. Something good. I'm hoping with you and . . seven months . . oh seven months is still ridiculously hard. I tend to forget how very recent Alexander's death is as you are so articulate and self aware. Hang on in there mama.

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  3. "And that you can walk around with your ribs splayed and nobody will even notice." Yes. Ugh.

    My sister-in-law often says, "we miss you guys" because even though we live 30 min away, we rarely get together. But as my husband pointed out, they miss who we used to be. They think they want to spend time with us, but they don't get that treading water, trying to figure out how to be who we are now takes all the energy we have.

    And of course the thing about that permanently ajar door, is that I don't want it to close entirely. That carefree, happy (and yes, sometimes idiotic) person I once was is the mother of a beautiful little boy. The person I am now is the mother of another little boy about to be born. Perhaps I will never know how these two selves relate, but somehow they must coexist.

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    1. Oh what your sister-in-law said made be cry. It's so true. I miss my husband, I miss myself, I miss our friends. Even though we are all still here.

      I don't want the door to shut. Not entirely.

      It is a strange balancing act, to be the mother of children both alive and dead. But, somehow, we seem to manage it. Thinking of you, you must be very close to meeting your second son now xo

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  4. I have no profound thoughts at the moment but simply wanted to say that I love this post and any discussion about identity and loss. It's all so messy and impossible to analyze or explain.

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    1. Messy? Oh yes. Certainly. I think that losing a child can completely turn your world on its head, take everything you thought that you knew and understood and give it a good shake. It's no wonder it is so very difficult to articulate WHAT on earth is happening.

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  5. Thank you so much for writing every word that you write and share here. I can't even begin to tell you how much you and your words mean to me. I read everything but usually can't find the words to even comment but I think you should know how much I love and hate everything you write. I mean I love that you write it but I hate that it means so much and hurts so deeply. Again, I'm at a loss for words....just want to thank you.

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    1. Thank you so much Molly. I really appreciate your kind words. Often, when I read my posts back to myself, they don't seem to make much sense. Not even to me. And I wrote them! They all seems to arrive in my head in a great big rush and then I just have to get rid of them as fast as I can via this blog! It seems to be something that I need to do to stop all this stuff rattling around in my head. And it helps me so much to know that somebody is listening and that it makes even a little sense to you.

      I also have a bit of a love / hate relationship with this place, with writing. I never really wrote anything much before Georgina died. Whilst I enjoy the process of writing sometimes, I can't write much about anything else and, as a result, my own writing is something that I can't uncouple from Georgina's death. So maybe it is something that I'll never love or do for fun.

      Rambling now, sorry! Thank you Molly xo

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  6. The pattern of the mural on the wall on the back corridor of an infrequently used exit from the NICU, the handwriting on the call button for Jessica's ward, the curl of the hook of the coat stand, the smell of the parents' shower room, the tone of the voices of the women who worked next door, the skin of the consultant doctor.

    The children sprout and stretch, like a fast motion film of plant growth in a nature documentary. I seem to stagnate but I know that can't really be the case. It's just a terribly slow kind of growth, even in fast motion.

    *****

    Do you wish, if possible, you could go back and say something to CW Before? What?

    I am not sure what to tell CiM Before. I'm not sure I want her to know. She frustrates and annoys me by *not* knowing - but if I told her, she would not understand.

    (your details! above! handwriting, curl, skin, plants, et al)

    Never heard of Reminiscence Bump before this. Knew the form, but not the name.

    Everything I remember - almost - hurts.

    Terribly,

    CiM xoxo CiUK

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    1. I don't know. I would like to issue a few practical instructions as to how to proceed when the twins were born. And, like you say, she wouldn't understand. I used to sit and cry whilst I was pregnant, imagining that something would go wrong. But I didn't actually believe it would happen? Not really. Because I didn't think that things like that happened to me. And I have no idea why I thought that I was so damn special.

      And I think I know what you mean, when you say that it hurts. Because you can't separate those more distant memories from what, with hindsight, you know is waiting over the horizon? And all those memories and feelings and plans are dispossessed? Wandering around sadly somewhere with no owner? And I'm left, reminiscing over fabric prints and murals, not planning a great deal, try not to remember whilst simultaneously trying desperately to remember.

      Oh geesh, some days I just look around and think 'ruins, ruins - what the hell happened here?' Not every day, certainly not every day, but some days.

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  7. I was just thinking about what it will be like to be old, sitting on the porch swing... I see with a different perspective that the elderly are filled with memories, mysteries and hopes and dreams of a lifetime. I could sit for hours now with the fantasies and recollections of my 36 years. Let alone 86 years.

    I love that photograph of you. I think I may be gripping photos a wearing down their edges as I rock back and forth with the ghosts of my past in my sometime from now future.

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    1. Oh yes Renel. That's so true. Life can be ridiculously long in some respects? So many memories and mysteries and hopes and dreams collected up. And I hope I still have some way left to go and perhaps a few more things to gather.

      I love that image of the photograph, being gripped, with its worn down edges.

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  8. As always you speak such truth and your words resonate very strongly. I have been thinking a lot these last few weeks about the old me and how naive and idiotic she was. She too used to feel things in colour. I feel like I am grey, tired, withered and old now. So jaded and so different from the old me. I too struggle to reconcile this two very different people, particularly as I am still not really sure who the latest one is, even almost three years down the line.

    I can't shut that door either and I so don't want to. I guess I want to hold onto the impossibility of one day waking up to find this is all a nightmare. How crazy is that? See this new person is pretty idiotic too.

    With love as always x

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    1. Oh Ava's mummy. I know. I know. Sometimes I still feel so full of colour, of full of emotions, that it is almost painful. Because I'm experiencing, experiencing, experiencing. Whether I want to or not. Things I see, things I hear. This morning I went for a walk with Reuben and the sun was shining on the dew in the grass and we were watching a spider walking about and I love it, But all seems too, too much. That I get all of this and that she gets nothing. Maybe?

      And then, the majority of the time, I feel grey and tired and withered. Unable to be the person that I was and fed up of pretending to be her. Not too sure who I actually am either. But suspecting that this current incarnation is also a bit of an idiot as I don't seem to understand anything much? At least we can be idiotic together.

      I also still think, hoping against hope, that I'll wake up.

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  9. I probably shouldn't comment, I made a mess of commenting on Merry's post.
    I'm currently stuck, but I'm not at all sure where, lots of what you say here makes sense.
    and I'm going to leave it there before I say something stupid.
    x

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    1. Jeanette - I don't think you made a mess of commenting on Merry's post. I thought it was a beautiful comment. If you were to say something stupid here, it would be for the very first time. And I'm beating you hands down at a score of something like five billion stupid comments to your nil xo

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  10. I'm on the page with "Hope's Mama". I get this too.
    Hugs...

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  11. This is a stunning piece and something I think about often...how naive and foolish I was before and how jaded I've become. Sending you much love across the ocean on a crisp fall day here in the Canadian prairies. A perfect day for reminiscing.

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  12. "The birth of my daughters seemed to rip all my memories away and cast them adrift. The past and the future. And I find myself marooned on a small stretch of time. Where I can't seem to connect with my own past and everything since seems a little like a dream."

    That's it - exactly. An utter disconnect from who I was before, and although life is moving me forward, an unwillingness to move away from him.

    Stuck. Fast. To this same spot - to him.

    I suppose it's the recognition that yes, I have survived this - just. But how do I LIVE again?

    I am utterly at a loss as to how I begin to do that...

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  13. Hello sweet Cath... I am trying to get caught up on all of my beloved friends.. again. Time has such a way of stretching and snapping like a runner band doesn't it? Where does it go- I ask myself these days- even though there was once a time when I felt it drag like a rock in a burlap sack.
    Anyhow- I just wanted to say that I am here- reading- always listening. So sorry to be so tardy with the writing bit- especially to you sweet woman who got me through May-August in more ways than you know with the kindness of your words.
    Love ans light...

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  14. As always, so perfectly said. I always equate how I have felt since losing Hadley with the feeling I get when I see myself in old pictures. I see myself as a person but I don't recognize her at all, no matter what I do I just can't bring myself back to the old her. For a long time I didn't even like to look at myself anymore because all I could see was the emptiness, I can look now but I'm not sure I recognize either, the me before or the one looking back at me now.

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  15. Sometimes I can't believe that people still think I'm the same person they knew sometime before...I'm not even really sure when I started my backwards march toward the knowing of nothing. It's like they all went forward feeling more and more grown-up and I'm watching the whole thing from somewhere beneath the bleachers. It does feel like starting all over again, doesn't it?

    It's early and I'm coming down with a cold. Having trouble forming coherent thoughts but I wanted to stop by and express my gratitude for this post. You're the best, Catherine.

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