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Photographs and Memories

By Geoff Hart

Previously published as: Hart, G. 2021. Photographs and Memories. p. 47-62 In: D. Field (ed.) The Knot Wound Around Your Finger: an anthology on memory, history, & inheritance. Bell Press Books.

It begins innocently enough with what I jokingly refer to as “senior brain.” I find I can’t remember the name of someone I’m thinking of, even if I can clearly see their face. At first, it’s just actors. Later, it becomes acquaintances. Five minutes after the conversation has moved on, I remember—it’s the esprit de l’escalier from Hell. Early on, I just shake my head ruefully and move on. Later, I often slap my forehead and speak the name, completely out of context. It confuses people, so I teach myself to stop doing that.

Things progress. One day, I can’t find my eyeglasses because I’ve forgotten that I pushed them up on my forehead. Another day, I pour boiling water on the teabag and two hours later, stumble across the stone-cold cup of tea I’ve forgotten. But it gets worse. Like the night I find myself staring at the remote for what seems like an hour, trying and failing to figure out how to turn on the TV, only to discover I’m holding the remote for the satellite dish. In fairness, I’ve got six remotes sitting on the coffee table before the TV, and three of them have the same brand name, making it nearly impossible to tell which one goes with which device. Trial and error would be easier if I remembered which ones I’d already tried, or remembered to replace the batteries so the correct remote for a task, when I eventually find it, actually does what I want it to do.

I resolve to label each remote with masking tape once I figure out what it does. I forget to do this. Again.

It could just be senior brain, or...

“I won’t sugarcoat this, Dan. It’s almost certainly early-onset dementia. Probably some form of Alzheimer’s given your family history. We’ll need to do some imaging studies to be sure. But given your descriptions and your family history, that’s my best guess.”

We book an appointment in a month for a bunch of TLAs—three letter acronyms, I remember—and he pats me on the shoulder. “We’ll see you in a month, Dan. In the meantime, if your wife can’t drive you, maybe leave your car at home and take public transit. And you and your wife are going to need counselling to get you through this. It won’t be easy.” He gives me a sheet of paper with the names and contact info for some therapists.

I nod, and I’m halfway home before I remember my wife left me a year ago for reasons I can’t remember, and I somehow neglected to mention it to my doctor. I pull over, and let the tears spill down my cheeks. Sorrow turns to fear, fear turns to anger—and I park my car somewhere safe, figuring I’m in no condition to drive. I hope I’ll remember where I left it.

I remember my imaging appointment—or, to be fair, Siri remembers it for me. I lie, motionless and with head restrained, for what seems like a day in the MRI machine, a claustrophobic and inauspiciously coffin-like structure, staccato sounds of the device’s powerful magnets like someone knocking on a tin roof with a triphammer.

Or throwing dirt on the lid of my coffin.

When it’s over, they pull me out into the world again, and I squint against the brightness of the overhead light. I can’t remember where I’ve left my clothing, but a kind nurse brings me to the lockers. Only I can’t remember the lock’s combination. Drama ensues while we discover they don’t have it written down anywhere, and we have to wait for one of the maintenance staff to cut the lock with a giant pair of bolt cutters. Turns out I left the paper containing the combination inside the locker.

In the doctor’s office, the doctor is frowning. “I’m sorry Dan, it’s variant 3-alpha Alzheimer’s.” I’m numb, having expected this but not really grasped it emotionally. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hit the Mayo Clinic website to consult the list of symptoms. No, I literally can’t tell you how often. The sense of déjà vu tells me it’s been many times, but I simply can’t remember.

“Beg pardon?”

I’ve drifted away, and the doctor’s sudden silence tells me that.

“I was saying, Dan, that we don’t really have any treatment for the cognitive decline. There are some promising genetic therapies that attack a few genes that we think are responsible for the decline. But they’re in clinical trials, and I don’t think you’ll qualify. Also, I’ve got to be honest with you, the early results aren’t all that promising. It’s a complicated disease.”

Fear surges, but I manage to master it before it becomes anger. I’ve had lots of practice. “In my place, what would you do?”

He sits back in his chair, and I can see the bleak look in his eyes. Probably thinking, throw myself off the nearest tall building. I know that’s where I’m going with this. But instead he gets hold of himself and sits up straighter.

“We can’t cure it, but we can help you manage the symptoms. There’s an interesting trial going on at the university that uses augmented reality to help people with dementia manage their environment better.”

“Augmented reality... you mean like Google Glass?”

“Yes, only better.”

“What you’re saying is, when you look at me, you think glasshole.” I laugh at my own joke; he smiles dutifully. He may be thinking that, but he’s too much the pro to actually admit it.

“If you’d like, I can call them and see if they need any testers.”

“Please do that. And thanks.”

“I’ll also put you on the waitlist for a social worker. You’re going to need to transition to a long-term care facility sooner rather than later.” He sighs. “I’m sorry I can’t do more for you. We like to think the white coats make us angels, but modern medicine is in many ways still a black art.”

We shake hands, I leave the office, and when I reach the street, it takes a moment to orient myself. Where did I leave my God-damned car this time? I let the fear become anger—at myself, at the world, at God. The anger helps me focus, and I recall that I left the car at home, not feeling safe driving it any longer. It takes a bit longer to remember which bus I need to take to get home. I don’t remember anything about the trip, but I must have asked the driver to announce my stop, since he yells at me and, intimidated, I hunch my shoulders like he’s going to hit me and exit through the rear door.

I forget my appointment at the university, but they haven’t forgotten me. They apparently have a good grasp of the kind of person they’re working with, and call me an hour before to remind me of the appointment, tell me they’re sending a grad student with a car to pick me up, and call me again when she’s getting closer so that I remember to come downstairs. She’s a young Asian woman who introduces herself, holds the door open for me, helps me with my seatbelt, and doesn’t seem to resent me when I ask her for her name again. Twice.

At the lab, I meet Doctor Roberts. (I remember his name not because he repeats it, but because he has a name tag clipped to his shirt pocket. Apparently my visual memory is still intact, even if the rest of my memory has left the building when I wasn’t looking.) He’s Black and looks familiar, somehow.

“Dan, I’ll be your neurologist from here on. I’d like to introduce you to the rest of the crew.” He repeats the Asian woman’s name, but it goes in one ear and out the other, just like the names of their hardware engineer, software engineer, and artificial intelligence specialist. Sadly, I guess they’re not self-important enough for name tags, and I can’t see their security badges without squinting inappropriately.

“So let me start by asking: do you know what augmented reality is?”

I mumble a halfhearted description, but do remember the term glasshole. They exchange glances, but nobody laughs.

Roberts continues. “That’s basically right, Dan. The idea’s to provide you with an assistive device that will figure out what you’re looking at using artificial intelligence. For someone who’s not facing the challenges you’re facing, we have a cell phone app—you just point a smartphone camera at an object and the phone tells you what it is. But Alzheimer’s patients often lose the ability to remember how the phone works. For them, we recommend a pair of glasses. You already wear glasses, so the adaptation shouldn’t be too difficult.”

The engineer whose name I still can’t remember opens a box that’s been sitting on the lab bench beside him, and removes a pair of surprisingly stylish eyeglasses. The left earpiece has a thin trailing cable that connects to a blocky black-plastic case about the size of a cell phone. A battery, presumably. Maybe a portable hard drive. There’s a faint flicker of light coming from each temple of the glasses.

“Want to take it for a spin?”

A former president. That’s who the doctor looks like. Now if only I could remember the guy’s name.

Not important.

I nod, and engineer boy places the battery or whatever in my shirt pocket, gently removes my glasses, then pushes back my hair and loops the earpieces over my ears. Through the glasses, I see a translucent rectangle floating above the object nearest the center of my visual field. When I pan my head, the rectangle jumps to other objects. It’s disorienting at first, but my eyes quickly adjust to the motion. When I return my gaze to the man who’s been talking, and focus on his face, two icons appear: the outline of a mouth and the outline of a page filled with text. I focus on the page icon, and the words “Doctor Roberts, MD” appear above his face. When I focus on the name, his LinkedIn page appears, blocking his face until I glance away from it and it fades. I look at his face again, and this time focus on the mouth icon. In my ears, I hear the words “Doctor Alan Roberts.” I tap my ear, reaching for an earbud.

“Bone conduction,” says engineer boy. “That way, there’s no need for dedicated earphones. They’re just too easy to lose. And they break. But there’s a speaker in the battery pack in case you misplace the glasses.” I look at him. Ramirez, the glasses say.

I feel a grin spreading across my face. “That’s so damned cool!”

Grins from the whole team. Roberts nods. “We’re pretty pleased with it. There are still some glitches, of course, but we can upgrade the software wirelessly as we spot the problems and fix them. So the performance should improve incrementally. That’s what”—he says a name that I immediately forget—“will be doing with the AI: teaching it to recognize not just the identity of an object, but also its significance to you. We’ll work with you to ensure the software learns your needs and prioritizes those contexts accordingly.”

The AI person speaks. I can’t tell whether it’s a he, a she, or a they, and don’t know whether that’s normal or just another mental lapse on my part. “The software will have to monitor you 24/7. So we need you to sign a waiver to permit that monitoring. It’s a bit of an invasion of privacy…” I look at them, and the glasses display Rashad, which doesn’t help.

I shrug. “It’s not like I’ll have any illusion of privacy once I’m in the residence.”

“There’s a modesty feature. Click the icon at the top of the screen… the one with the smiley face holding hands over its eyes. There you go!”

“You think I’m going to remember that?”

Rashad laughs. “The software will recognize a toilet or shower stall and make the icon flash to remind you it’s there. Before you ask: it’ll reset when you leave the room, so you can’t forget and leave it turned off.”

Roberts hands me a multi-page paper contract, not meeting my eyes, and I sign it without reading it. “Date please?” Roberts supplies the date, and I write it beside my signature. He takes the paper and pen from me, countersigns, and hands it to the Asian girl. Tran, say the glasses.

“Great! We’ll leave you with Doctor Rashad to learn and customize the interface. You’ve figured out how to choose text versus speech. They’ll run you through the calibration routines and settings.”

They leave, and Rashad and I spend a few hours playing with the technology. Then they confiscate the glasses and promise to deliver them the next day, with the necessary tweaks. When I return home, I find the kettle’s boiled dry. Fortunately, unlike the stove that’s also on, it has an automatic shutoff.

Engineer boy—Ramirez—comes the next day with the glasses, and we encounter our first problem: I can’t remember the password for Siri, so he can’t pair the glasses with my network. That doesn’t stop him; he picks up the smart speaker, pulls the plug, then reboots it, tinkering with something I can’t see. That quickly, the glasses are online, and when I look at the speaker, the password appears. I’m tempted to Google him and learn who I’m dealing with, but decide it’s not worth it. I’m just going to forget him again.

He walks me around the apartment, iPad in hand, examining a long checklist of objects: light switches, appliances, remote controls, bathroom amenities... pretty much everything I interact with on a daily basis. For each one, he interrogates me to learn how I use it, and as I explain, he taps a bunch of settings. It takes a couple hours, but by the end of it, anything I look at has its own tag and my medication schedule has been recorded somewhere along the way, since the glasses remind me it’s time for my afternoon pills. To test the glasses, I try turning on the oven. When I do, a red icon appears, blinking at the top of my left lens. When I stare at it, a popup appears: The oven is on. Please turn it off when you’re done.

Impressive!

Before engineer boy leaves, he reminds me to plug in the battery each night for recharging. “The glasses will remind you,” he adds, “but you’ll feel more in control if you can do this yourself.”

As the door closes, I remember the oven. Well, the blinking indicator reminds me to turn it off. So I do before I forget, and the indicator vanishes. I putter in the kitchen, making a simple omelet, with only a little bit of shell in it. The glasses display a reminder of the steps required, and a reminder to turn off the burner when I’m done. I’m pissed off at it, since I still remember how to cook an omelet, but the anger passes when I turn on the television on the first try. I’ve got to admit, it’s nice having an assistant who knows the technology far better than I ever will. That night, as I sit on my bed, a reminder chimes in my ear: Recharge your battery. I plug it in, wondering how I’m ever going to remember the glasses in the morning.

But they’ve thought of that too. The battery has a motion sensor and speaker. When I rise at 2 AM to take a piss, as I do every night, it reminds me to put on the glasses. I do, and ignore the humiliating pop-up that reminds me to flush when I’m done and jiggle the handle to ensure that the water won’t keep running all night.

I carry on with my normal routine, interrupted only by an occasional phone call from the researchers. Do I need help with X, and is Y functioning the way I want it to function? Yes, yes, everything’s great. Now leave me alone! But it really is great. I feel enormously safer, and I’m not feeling the frustration that leads to those unpredictable rages that often end with me wiping hot tears from my cheeks, wishing I could just let loose and break something.

The days pass, and a social worker arrives to talk with me. She’s a tiny Latina with fierce eyes and a no-nonsense way of working through her checklist. She’s obviously coordinated with the university team, since she knows about the glasses and can download my activity logs direct to her iPad. Before I can decide I’d like to remember her name, she’s done and out the door. I spend a few minutes trying, unsuccessfully, to figure out how to learn her name. About the time I’m ready to give up, I notice the business card she’s left on my coffee table. Maria Hernández, Master’s in Social Work, BA in senior psychology. She’s cute, and has an amazing smile. I stare at the business card until a dialog box appears. I click OK so the glasses will remember her name and pair it with an image.

Time passes, and the long-term care facility sends people to help me pack. I’ll be moving from my current apartment, with two bedrooms, into a single room, which means I’m going to have to downsize radically. The thought makes me extremely sad, and I turn away from the packers to hide my tears. This time, the Asian woman’s here to help. Tran, say the glasses, as she tinkers with her iPad and updates the software. Gopinder, the big Sikh orderly, pats my shoulder and offers me a hug that I reject. But not in an unkind way. And I find myself wondering how in Hell I’ve remembered his name, until I notice the large-print name badge on his shirt. I sigh.

The only good thing about dementia is that once I’ve sorted my possessions into keep and discard piles, I promptly forget the discards, unless my gaze happens to wander across them. Those few times I recall what I’m missing, the glasses remind me that I’ve discarded it. Another nice thing about the glasses is that they’re infinitely patient. They don’t get frustrated when I ask them the same question twenty times. Or thirty, or...

I don’t remember anything about my move to the long-term care facility. Just a sense of sadness at what I’ve left behind, even if I can’t evoke exactly what it is that’s making me sad. My new home is a small but comfortable room. The bed is smaller, as it’s a single bed, and the room’s equipped with a variety of gadgets that start out bewildering, until I focus on them and explanations appear. At the end of my first day, I go to the welcome desk to ask when I’ll be returning home. Gopinder smiles sadly and covers my hand with his. “Dan, this is your home now.” Gopinder turns out to have the patience of a saint, since I ask him the same question every day for the next week. But by the end of that week, he’s clearly had words with the university people; when I put on my coat and head for the welcome desk, my glasses flash an alert: You’re already home, Dan. Oh. That’s reassuring. Engineer boy visits to hook me up to the network. Hernández? No, the glasses correct me: Ramirez. I find myself missing Doctor Ex-president and the Asian girl. Tran. There’s a fourth person I can’t remember, and whom I’m not motivated to look up.

There’s one woman who lies in bed all day, moaning. Periodically, she screams for help. The other residents, who seem mostly nice, have learned to ignore her but I can’t do it. It’s nails-on-a-chalkboard horrible, and the only reprieve comes at night, when they sedate her. One day, inspiration strikes, and I ask my glasses whether anything can be done about the sound. Something can be done: it turns out the earpieces can do that noise-cancellation trick. It doesn’t completely eliminate her cries, but reduces them to a tolerable mosquito buzz at the edge of perception.

One day, another inspiration strikes. Sure, this is my new home, but there’s a door. It’s not guarded for long stretches, since there are security measures to keep us inmates from leaving. But I find that it’s not hard to linger within sight of the keypad that visitors and staff use to leave. My glasses record the codes, and the next time there’s a shift change, with all the orderlies and medical staff meeting in the break room, I grab my coat and make a run for it. Everything’s going great until I get the door open and run smack into Gopinder’s broad chest. The subway ran late, so he’s 15 minutes late for work today.

“Where you going, Dan?” He places a gentle, but very strong, hand on my shoulder, turns me around, and holds the door for me.

I’m going nowhere, clearly. Damn. Maybe the glasses can do a better job of watching for openings tomorrow? But tomorrow, the keypad code is changed, and when I ask the glasses to record the new one, they refuse. Damn twice. Guess Gopinder had a few words with the researchers.

We settle into a routine. I get to know the people I share my space with, and like I said, they’re mostly nice. I spend a lot of time playing cards or checkers or backgammon. Anything, really, that involves social interaction. Anything except chess and strategy games—I find it too hard to look ahead several moves and remember what I saw. The other games rapidly become boring until I regretfully instruct the glasses to stop helping me with my play. Once I stop winning most games, my interest revives. We share our opinions on the news of the day but mostly ignore politics. That’s a very different world, and one we don’t belong to anymore. Those of us who’ve been warehoused don’t get to vote anymore, for instance. I’m not sure whether that’s policy, or just benign neglect.

Most of my ward-mates have brought photographs of loved ones: deceased wives, children, grandchildren. I recall having a wife, and can almost bring her face to mind, but I don’t have any photos to share. My parents have been dead for years, and I never had children. The glasses tell me I don’t have any close relatives either. One man gets upset when I tell him I have no photos. He doesn’t believe me, and thinks I’m holding out on him. Finally, I get fed up and order a couple picture frames, print some photos I find on my glasses, and have them delivered. I install them on my dresser, where anyone who visits can see them. Now that I’m sharing, we become fast friends and spend a lot of time playing gin rummy. He never asks why my son is Black and looks like a former president, or why my daughter’s Vietnamese. Good thing. I don’t know the answer. Adopted, maybe?

One day, I notice a short blond child with a dark brown face standing in a corner, watching me. I call out to her, but she keeps staring. I focus the glasses on her, and the word sunflower appears over her head. Strange name for a girl, but I’ve heard stranger. I think. I can’t remember for sure. So I shout her name louder, thinking maybe she’s hard of hearing. She continues to ignore me. I get irate, enough so that Gopinder comes running to see what the trouble is.

“There’s no one there, Dan.” He pats my shoulder soothingly.

“Don’t be a fool, Gopinder. I see her, clear as day. Right there. In the corner.”

Gopinder sighs and goes over to fetch her. He gently takes my hand and places it on the girl’s hair. And it turns out not to be a girl at all, but rather a flower. A sunflower. I’m so ashamed my cheeks heat up and I’m about ready to start crying. Gopinder pats my shoulder again. “It’s probably your meds. I’ll ask the doctors to up the dose of your antipsychotic.”

I’m taking meds? The glasses confirm it.

In the coming days, the blond girl keeps returning to watch me, but I’m less agitated about it than I used to be. She wants to be antisocial? Fine. Her loss. Everyone else here loves me.

We don’t have much use for money at the residence. Everything’s pretty much paid for, done by automated monthly withdrawals from my account. That works fine until the cheque bounces, so to speak. There’s something wrong with my bank account. There should be more money. I rummage through my desk until I turn up my cheque book. Yes, I know, using a cheque book is so 20th century. But it’s not like I have a choice. I can’t remember how to use my damned online banking, even though the password manager in my glasses lets me log in. The residence manager calls Roberts and his crew, and lo and behold, it turns out the glasses have been recording me night and day in the interest of improving the software. I don’t recall giving them permission to do that, but I must have done so and forgotten. They seem like nice people, not the kind who’d do something like that if I hadn’t told them it was okay.

Anyway, it turns out one of the orderlies was using the glasses while I slept. He found the password manager app and cracked the main password. Turns out choosing an obvious password (Daniel) isn’t so clever as I thought. Hackers don’t follow the common logic of “nobody would be stupid enough to use such an obvious password.” While the cops are frog-marching the orderly out the door, a fellow who looks vaguely familiar—Rashad, say the glasses—replaces my glasses with a new model that can recognize some pattern in my eyes as a password. No worry that anyone’s going to hack my glasses again.

One day, I receive a visit from the former president of the United States. Why he’s visiting me, I have no idea. My glasses tell me Doctor Roberts, but they’re clearly buggy. I know who it is visiting me. He looks sad, but that’s not unusual. Most of the people who visit us look sad.

“The thing is,” he says, not meeting my eyes, “we’ve run into money problems. This kind of cutting-edge research is pricey, and the university’s under severe financial pressure these days. So they brought in a bunch of venture capitalists who are willing to fund promising projects like ours. Which is great, but it means we’re no longer in control of our own research. The first thing they did was fire Abdel.” Doctor Rashad, the glasses tell me. “They’ve brought in their own programmer. Dan, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this. I’ll do my best to fight for you, but... hell. You understand how it is, right?”

Yeah, I understand. Nobody bears the weight of the world quite like the President. It’s why they all go grey so young. I shake his hand, ask him to sign his photo. An odd look crosses his face, but he takes the marker I give him and scrawls something across an empty corner. The signature doesn’t look right, but I’m not going to tell him how to sign his own name. As he leaves, he wishes me well, and there’s a profound sadness in his eyes.

It’s a rough week. My hands start trembling, and sometimes they won’t obey me, or obey with a time lag, like a stutter but for the muscles. When I complain, Gopinder tells me they’ve changed one of my meds. Doctor’s orders. I ask for the name, which of course flies in one ear and out the other, but the glasses remember. It’s a new antipsychotic, and Google tells me it can apparently cause symptoms similar to those of Parkinson’s disease. But it’s supposed to be safe for seniors, and it’s very profitable for the company that developed it since there aren’t any generic alternatives. I shrug. Pharmacists have to earn a living too, right? But I liked the old meds better—I didn’t knock my coffee on the floor half the time when I reached for it. My glasses are no help. They show me the optimal path to the cup, but if my muscles won’t obey me, that’s no damned help. I almost throw them away—then I reconsider. I do decide to leave them on my night stand before breakfast the next day, despite their entreaties to come back for them. But not understanding anything that’s going on around me is, bluntly, terrifying. Next day, they’re back on again. I ask if I can have my old meds back. Gopinder asks the doctor who prescribed them, and tells me they’re not willing. His big brown eyes are sad, and he places a gentle hand on my shoulder.

I’m mostly accustomed to the tremors now, despite having to use a walker to get around without falling, but now I’m having a hard time thinking straight. I ask my glasses, and it turns out that’s another side-effect of the new meds. I ask again to change back to the old meds, and they refuse again. But a stranger shows up the next day, an offensively cheerful young white man who fiddles with something on my glasses. When he places the ear pieces behind my ears again, there’s a new icon.

“Click the icon,” he says, “and you can browse the web from your glasses. It’ll help stave off that cognitive decline you’re experiencing. Get that old grey matter thinking again!” He pats my shoulder. I shrug off his hand, annoyed. “Try it! There’s a content filter to protect you from anything harmful.”

I already know how to browse the web, but maybe content filtering is a good idea. So I click the icon, and the lenses fill with a welcome message and a link that points to a company web page. I click it. It’s for a pharmaceutical company with a vaguely familiar name. They have a special offer for wearers of my glasses: a reduced price for stocks in the company.

“You said it protects me from harm?”

“You have my word on it.”

I give the glasses permission to access my bank account.

Author’s notes:

For a story that focuses on memory loss, the only possible choice of tense was the present. Dedicated to the memory (no pun intended) of my father.

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