remembering the past | Bertram's Blog

Reverse Memory

January 11, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’ve often heard people say that as they get older, it’s easier to remember their childhood than what they had for breakfast. I wonder how old you have to be before that sort of reverse memory kicks in. Or is it more of a dementia thing than an elderly thing?

Studies have shown that after 75, people tend to start becoming truly elderly, leaping ahead in the aging game. Before that age, people’s bodies can keep up with healing whatever goes wrong, but after that age, the ability to heal slows, and so the infirmities add up. Is it the same with mental issues?

So far, my memory seems okay, with only the typical problems people of all ages have of not being able to dig a particular word out of their memory or getting sidetracked and forgetting food on the stove. I am not yet to the point where I forget what I had for breakfast while remembering my childhood. In fact, there’s little about my childhood I remember or even want to remember. I certainly don’t remember being this little girl, though she was (is?) me.

For the most part, I don’t think about the past. It seems irrelevant, and to an extent, non-existent since no one knows where the past is. Mostly, though, I don’t have any issues with the past. I’ve come to terms with any problems that might have lingered, worked through grief, and dealt with my regrets. I purposely did so because back when I was taking care of my father after Jeff died, I knew that someday I’d be needing to create a new life for myself, and I didn’t want to bring along any excess baggage.

So what happens if I get to the point where my short-term memory is shot and my long-term memory is all I have? Do I have to go back to thinking about things I stopped thinking about long ago?

It’s not just the past I don’t think about — I usually don’t think about the future, either. Just as that little girl I once was could never imagine my life today, I’m thinking that the woman I am today can’t imagine what my life will be as the years pass. Of course, I know where the highway of my life will end — where it ends for everyone. Still, I find it best not to look too far ahead, since such views can be worrisome.

A funny thought (or maybe not so funny) — I read so much, a book a day usually, that other people’s lives are more in my mind than my own. When I get to where I forget today and start reminiscing, will I remember those lives as my own? Probably not — considering how much I read — starting a new book as soon as the old one is finished — I don’t give any book enough time to slither from short term memory to long term storage.

As with most of what I think about, none of this matters. These are just idle thoughts to fill an idle mind.

Still, I do wonder.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, dealing with old age, life. Tags: ability to heal slows down, After age 75, life, long term memory, mental-health, no regrets, not needing to remember the past, not wanting to remember the past, remembering the past, short term memory, writing. 3 Comments »

Nature’s Fireworks

July 5, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Last night I went outside for a bit to watch nature’s fireworks — the immense show of lightning that so often shows up on July fourth in Colorado. Standing there in the unearthly light, I was reminded of another time I watched the show. It was decades ago. I stood on the roof of the apartment building in Denver where I lived, and watched the far-off jagged lines of light.

It seems odd to think of that young woman and all she hadn’t yet experienced. All that she couldn’t even have imagined that would eventually happen to her. I think it was right before I met Jeff, so he wasn’t even in the picture. Our life together, our great cosmic connection, was on the horizon, but she hadn’t an inkling.

In fact, she didn’t think she’d be alive much longer. When she was young, she could project herself into the future, but that future always ended when she was twenty-five. No matter how she tried, she could never imagine her life after that. She thought it meant she would die that year, but instead, it meant she would come alive because that was the year she met Jeff. It makes sense to me now, that lack of any sense of the future, because how could she have projected herself into a future she couldn’t ever have imagined?

She couldn’t have imagined any of her life with Jeff. She couldn’t have imagined — though she dreamed — that she would learn to write and would become a published author. She couldn’t imagine how much something called a blog would mean to her (back then, there wasn’t even a hint of such a personal use for the computers that were just coming into renown).

She couldn’t have imagined Jeff’s death and the grief that would all but destroy her before it rebuilt her. She couldn’t have imagined that anything would ever get her to take care of her father when he got old — it was the one thing she was determined she would never do. (Even at a young age, I knew I was the “designated daughter,” and Jeff saved me from that. For a while, anyway. But fate came calling.) She couldn’t have imagined living in California and especially not in the desert — she never liked California, and she hated the heat. And she could never have imagined finding peace and hope in the desert, or taking dance classes, or making so many friends. She never imagined that two of her brothers and both parents would die. (Though logically, she knew her parents would die at some point, but they were still in their middle years and a long way from the end, so she never thought about it.)

She could never have imagined traveling by herself, camping by herself, hiking and backpacking by herself. She could never even imagine having the self-confidence and courage and boldness such adventures would demand.

And especially, she could never have imagined owning a house.

All that was in her future, and it seems so strange that the young woman standing on the roof watching the lightning storm hadn’t even a glimmer that any of those momentous things would occur.

And yet, there I was last night, on the other end of that life, looking at what seemed the same storm, and knowing all that the young woman would experience.

Suddenly, the sounds of a war zone brought that reverie to an end. I had never lived anyplace where fireworks were legal, and oh, my — hours and hours of the sound of gunfire all around me. At one point, I looked out the back door because it seemed to me as if the sounds were coming from my yard, and I was shocked to see huge falls of sparks landing on my garage and house from the fireworks nearby neighbors had set off. Luckily, the long dry months had come to an end a couple of hours earlier, so there was no danger, but it still made me nervous.

Today, although all is sodden, it’s quiet. The war is over. The lightning that brought the flash of memory has receded into the past.

Or into the future.

Next year, or the year after, or ten years from now, perhaps I will again watch nature’s fireworks on the fourth, and I will be marveling at happenings I can’t imagine today.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator