I struggle with my mother's dementia, as her most recent activities seem ephemeral, but she embraces things from adolescence and back, as if yesterday. She remembers her adulthood if asked questions, but her sense of current reality versus the past can be very blurry.

What are your oldest memories? Best memories? Do you have a feeling of frustration you've lost some of your memories? I can tell you right now when I think back to even my best memories, I don't remember everything, but I wish I did.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

I struggle with my mother's dementia, as her most recent activities seem ephemeral, but she embraces things from adolescence and back, as if yesterday. She remembers her adulthood if asked questions, but her sense of current reality versus the past can be very blurry.

What are your oldest memories? Best memories? Do you have a feeling of frustration you've lost some of your memories? I can tell you right now when I think back to even my best memories, I don't remember everything, but I wish I did.

Gordon I can sympathize. My mom dives deeper into dementia on a daily basis. The past of my brothers & I growing up is nearly crystal clear but current is a blur.

I've got a good memory but I have started forgetting names

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Near the end, My Mother did not remember that I had two daughters and she had forgotten her own youngest son.

My first memory is of crawling on the floor looking up at a large Christmas tree. I was crawling because i could not walk yet.

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My first memory is of crawling

That's amazing. I can only genuinely remember one or two things back to around kindergarten, but even that is sort of iffy. My earliest memories are very foggy. ~They're up there somewhere I guess, but dusty and hard to find, and when I do recall one, it's like an isolated picture with no caption.

I am sure dementia is different for everyone, but the fascinating and most frustrating thing about it for me with my mother is she reverts to childhood with amazing clarity, but is confused about her most recent 50 years!

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

I can remember my teeth erupting in my upper jaw.
It was so far back, I remember that my crib was
still in my parents room. We lived right besides
the main gate at the Navel air station of Shearwater
in Nova Scotia. That puts me in the year 1948.



edit:
There are a few more but it is hard to nail down my age..

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My Aunt Jane had dementia from Her first stroke, Her 2nd stroke finished Her off, that was around 10 years back. :( So far She's the only one to have dementia in this family.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I know I am fortunate. I have a very clear memory of kindergarten and abundance of memories earlier than that. The first clear memory is of my falling into a well. That happened before I was 2. That was a traumatic event so its burned in. There are holes after that event but starting about 3 I am pretty clear.
Both of my parents have perfect memories when they died.

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Memory...

The joy of forever!

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One of my earliest memories, I was 3 or less, was of the ice-box refrigerator in my home and the ice man who carried in a huge block of ice on his shoulder and put it into the top compartment of the ice box. He held the ice with a giant pair of two handed tongs. He also had a hessian bag draped over his shoulder, no doubt for stopping the ice blocks from sliding off . I remember this very vividly.

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Earliest memory I have is from about age 3. my dad had a 1947 International pickup truck. And I remember me and my younger sister riding in it with dad and mom going to the store. That would be 1955.

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[/quote]

Old James

Going back to the early years. Winter of 1972. Denver, Colorado and more snow than Denver knew what to do with. I was 2 and a half.

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carried in a huge block of ice on his shoulder

I bet that was a hard job, but nice in hot weather. ;~)

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Hi Gordon, I can relate to your situation. My father is behaving the same way.
I've always been close to him and had heard many stories about his childhood, but I am now hearing more of his "personal thoughts and moments" from those early years amongst his ramblings. Thankfully he still has his lucid times, but unfortunately they are becoming fewer. Hang in there, and I wish you and your family well.

I can't remember when I was 3yrs old, maybe that's a good thing, since that is when I got a scar on My forehead, My Brother told Me I got the scar when I was 3, He said I was rushing to greet Dad as He was coming home, but that I tripped over a floor grate for the furnace.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Thankfully he still has his lucid times, but unfortunately they are becoming fewer

Some days are better than others. I've actually found mental ways of navigating through my mother's less lucid times, but she can come up with some doozies of non-sequiturs. Just yesterday, she nonchalantly said "Quo vadis" to me as I walked in the room. I was like, "What?" She knows Latin from her childhood days as a Catholic, but I'd never heard her say anything in Latin! Clear out of the blue sky.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

I can't remember when I was 3yrs old, maybe that's a good thing, since that is when I got a scar on My forehead, My Brother told Me I got the scar when I was 3, He said I was rushing to greet Dad as He was coming home, but that I tripped over a floor grate for the furnace.

I remember how I got mine. My little brother threw a cast iron airplane at me. Sirikin style. Wing stuck right into the skull bone. Then there's the dark spot in my arm where he stabbed me with a pencil. The point is still in my arm. Or the time he brought a cultivator down on my head. That scar is there too.
Don't worry I feel I got even when I shot him in the butt. Just a pellet rifle, but boy did he run.

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In our family we were not allowed to get scars....



edit;
We were allowed to chase cars, but not catch them...

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I have memories (or snippets) going back to when i was no more than a dot. Sometimes I know there is more to the story \ picture and that frustrates me.

I remember being around 3 or 4 and breaking one of those glass shaky snow globes in my neighbours (carers) livingroom and the water leaking out really slow. I remember putting in back on the sideboard and hoping no-one whould notice.

I remember the smell of a german pub and cobled court yards and English rain bouncing off the main street outside my Gran's like faires doing a somersault.

I remember being angry with my one year older sister when going out to play in a field and I got my welly stuck in the mud and she ran off.

These are all pre-five memories.

Some of these picture burn so bright yet are always limited.

Just as they should be.

I think we often want our memories to be as powerful and be as ever present and affect us just the way our present moment does.

They never will I suspect.

They add to us.

Somethings were yesterday.

... Today Gord with you near your Mum is the best day just as much every fond memory she had was the best day.

Not everything that was or is good needs create a snaphot or specific memory..

Warmth and love is a memory that has no specified moment.

They have presence.

I can't remember when I was 3yrs old, maybe that's a good thing, since that is when I got a scar on My forehead, My Brother told Me I got the scar when I was 3, He said I was rushing to greet Dad as He was coming home, but that I tripped over a floor grate for the furnace.

I remember how I got mine. My little brother threw a cast iron airplane at me. Sirikin style. Wing stuck right into the skull bone. Then there's the dark spot in my arm where he stabbed me with a pencil. The point is still in my arm. Or the time he brought a cultivator down on my head. That scar is there too.
Don't worry I feel I got even when I shot him in the butt. Just a pellet rifle, but boy did he run.

LOL...brothers will be brothers.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

BTW, it's not memories....
It is meowmories.

Get it right.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster