I’m terrified of losing my memory.
Genetically, it feels almost inevitable. My mom’s family has a history of Alzheimer’s disease, while my dad’s family has a history of brain tumors. Both sides also had members who struggled with alcoholism—another indicator of poor brain health in old age.
Even if I didn’t have a genetic predisposition to memory loss, my odds wouldn’t be great.
Studies show that 40 percent of adults over 65 will experience some form of major memory loss, and the odds sharply increase with a family history of dementia. While most brain cancers are not heritable, some are—and brain cancer treatments can significantly affect one’s ability to remember things. And if you’ve taken a high school health class, I’m sure you already know how alcohol impacts long-term memory.
As I get older and see loved ones pass away from memory-related conditions, I struggle with how inevitable it feels that I will eventually experience the same. To get out of this spiral, I repeat a seemingly gloomy statement to myself:
“You are not entitled to anything.”
It’s true, literally speaking. No law of physics entitles anyone to anything. I’ve been lucky to have a comfortable life so far, sure, but a horrible event could always take everything away in the blink of an eye—whether it be a seizure or a nuke. Nothing is sacred in this random universe, not even my ability to remember.
But there is a positive spin: as long as my memories remain intact, I can be grateful I have them. I am not entitled to anything in this world, so I can be happy to have anything at all—thing by thing, memory by memory.
I am predisposed to experience memory loss, yes. But I am still grateful for my family, genetics and all. My parents are intelligent, adaptable people who inspire me and make me laugh every day. My grandfathers, who have passed away, were honest and happy men who dedicated themselves to their communities for as long as I knew them. I also carry my family’s strengths in my DNA, not just their weaknesses. For that, I can be grateful.
If you’re scared of losing your memory like I am, trying to be grateful for your present memories might not be enough. So, I’ll share one last term I recently learned about: terminal lucidity.
Essentially, terminal lucidity is an unexpected return of mental clarity and memory that can occur in memory-impaired patients shortly before their deaths. Family members of patients with terminal lucidity often report witnessing remarkable moments when their formerly forgetful loved ones suddenly recall decades-old memories—memories that even their children had long forgotten—in the hours before their deaths.
Possible explanations for this phenomenon vary, but one leading theory is that dementia patients’ neurons sometimes thrash and discharge before death, activating long-forgotten memory chains that had always been stored in the brain. In other words, even on your deathbed (and especially on your deathbed), your brain still has the memories you’ve made—they’re just hidden, waiting for a neuronal reactivation to bring them to the surface.
Whether or not you can recall it, you will always have the life you’ve lived, the family you’ve bonded with, and the friends you’ve made. Terminal lucidity teaches us that the joyous memories in our lives aren’t taken away from us when we can’t recite them—they are simply hidden from view. I am grateful to know they exist at all.
I implore you to choose gratitude over despair—even if, like me, you don’t remember this article when you’re 81.
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