forgotten but not gone

I really need to answer this before I forget yet again. From Life Goes On:

Do you find you’re forgetting more the older you get? Any funny stories? Crazy stories? Sad stories? Stories about things you have forgotten.

Really, how can I have a story about things I've forgotten when I don't remember what they are.

Truly though, I have always been a bit absent-minded, one of those people who thinks about six things at once and by the time I've decided which has priority, four of the things are forgotten. Now that I'm older, I have an excuse. I tell people that when you get older, memory is the first thing to go and I don't remember the second thing.

For me anyway, those things that did manage to make it from short term to long term memory, are still there, even if I don't remember them at this very moment. I think of our memories like computer memory. Cache is our short term, the hard drive is our current long term, and we have CDs full of things that just have to be sorted and loaded and then we can find the information we want.

Like when I can't come up with an author's or actor's name, and then I'll wake up in the middle of the night and know it. Or my childhood memories. I don't remember much about long periods from it, but if I can come up with one memory, it leads to others that lead to others and things I had not thought of in years, come back, at first fuzzy and then more clear.

I do fear losing my memory. It's one of those things that scares me about getting older. But thus far, it does seem that Alzheimer's is hereditary. My father was coherent until he died at 88. My mother is about to turn 88, and more coherent than some of my students! But if I do end up getting stuck in my teenage memories when I'm 90, I sure hope I get to remember the fun, and not too many of those things I'm still trying not to.