So usually when I do these “from the library” posts, it’s a book on politics, but this came from the memoirs section.
I Forgot to Remember is an unsettling book. Su Meck, at the age of 22, lost her memory in a freak accident in 1988, a very Hollywood-style total amnesia (which she and/or her ghostwriter tells us is in fact extremely rare). But unlike a Hollywood tale, she struggles for many, many years subsequent to that accident.
A young mother with two children at the time of the accident, she is reduced to the intellectual capacities of a small child herself. Her “muscle memory” is intact — she can still ride a bike — but she not only doesn’t remember people and events of her past, but she doesn’t remember fundamental aspects of daily living. She has a limited vocabulary and not only doesn’t know the names for everyday objects but doesn’t know how they’re used and has to be taught, for instance, how to eat with a fork and knife. Her reading and writing ability is reduced to that of a first grader, and she simply doesn’t understand how to go about everyday life.
What’s worse, she’s on her own. She is released from the rehab center after she has recovered physically because no one seems to understand how severe her mental deficits are, even herself. And her husband returns to work and leaves a toddler and a preschooler in her care, even though the preschooler is so precocious, and she so disabled, that he takes care of her more than the reverse, in many ways. (Why did her husband not understand how dangerous it was to leave to small children in the care of someone who was reduced, in many ways, to the level of a child herself? She speculates that he was so young himself, only 24, that he didn’t really understand the gravity of the situation.) Later, her husband changes jobs and travels the majority of the time, and, when he’s home, yells at her for being “stupid.”
For a long stretch of time, her short-term memory is impaired as well — at first she simply doesn’t remember anything from one day to the next, and later she continues to have episodes in which she forgets where she is or what she’s doing. And even after her short-term memory improves and she’s able to build memories again, she continues to be baffled by the world around her, for example, when her husband moves the family overseas for an assignment and she has no idea what it means to be overseas. She spends two decades gradually learning to pretend to understand, hiding her deficits from everyone around her, including her severe inability to read and write. Only after her youngest child is ready to leave for college, and after a confrontation with the inconsistently-supportive, always-gone husband, does she herself return to college, beginning with remedial courses in which, bit by bit, she regains the academic knowledge and understanding of the world that she had been missing.
It’s disturbing to see that, according to her reconstruction of events based on medical records, her doctors and therapists, in the aftermath of her accident, failed to give her the help that she needed, and seemed to brush aside warning signs that she was not remotely competent, and to see how adrift she was in the years that followed. Has the medical profession improved in its understanding of head injuries since then? One hopes so. Of course, it would have helped if he husband wasn’t such an a** (and there’s a revelation about him towards the end of the book and ultimately something of a reconciliation), since he should have known that she needed help, right?
Bottom line: this was definitely in the category of “can’t put it down.” I’d say “well worth the money,” except the only expense comes if I don’t return it on time!
(Why don’t I buy books? Because I can’t manage to part with those I already have, and we don’t have any bookshelf space left. I suppose after my youngest is done with picture books, that’ll clear up some space!)
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In