“When we talk about Alzheimer’s, about amnesia and memory loss, we skip over something important. People suffering from this not only forget what was, but they are also completely incapable of making plans, even for the near future. In fact, the first thing that goes in memory loss is the very concept of the future.”(Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter, page 124)
“There is always such a moment, when a person suddenly grows old or suddenly realizes it. Surely at such moments you sprint in panic after the last caboose of the past, which is disappearing into the distance.”(Gospodiov, page 203)
“Memory holds you, freezes you within the fixed outlines of a single, solitary person whom you cannot leave. Oblivion comes to liberate you. Features lose their sharpness and definitiveness, vagueness blurs the shape. If I don’t clearly remember who exactly I am, I could be anyone, even myself, even as a child. …Here you really are no longer sure which side of history you’re on. Here ‘I’ becomes the most meaningless word, an empty shell that the waves roll along the shore.”(Gospodinov, page 267)
“There is something terribly alluring to me about the past. I’m hardly interested in the future. I don’t think it will hold many good things. But at least about the past you can have certain allusions.”(W.G. Sebald, The Emergence of Memory, page 57)
“As is written, we drank from the waters of the Lethe before we were born, so as to completely forget our previous life. But why do we sometimes wake up in the middle of the night or why do we get a sudden flash of insight at three in the afternoon that we’ve already lived through this and know what will happen from now on? Unexpected cracks have appeared. Cracks through which the light of the past streams in. And yet we were supposed to have forgotten everything.”(Gospodinov, page 270)
“Memories lie slumbering within us for months and years, quietly proliferating, until they are woken by some trifle and in some strange way blind us to life… what would we be without memory? We would not be capable of ordering even the simplest thought, the most sensitive heart would lose the ability to show affection, our existence would be a mere, never-ending chain of meaningless moments, and there would be not the faintest trace of a past.”(W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn, page 255)
“Ooh, a storm is threatening, my very life today…….. If I don’t get some shelter, Ooh yeah, I’m gonna fade away. (First verse of “Gimme Shelter,” The Rolling Stones, 1969)
“I remember, so as to keep the past in the past.(Gaspodinov, page 294)
“As we grow older, the memories of early life brighten, those of maturity and senescence grow dim and confused.”A. Burgess, You’ve Had Your Time)
Over the last few decades, Alzheimer’s and dementia have been topics much discussed and followed, particularly by the older population. It would seem that the number of cases has been increasing. However, that’s largely attributed to improved diagnostic methods rather than a significant increase in the actual prevalence of the diseases.
I recently finished reading an engrossing new novel (Time Shelter) that introduces a highly innovative approach to working with Alzheimer’s patients, and helping them to deal with the constantly changing dynamics of their lives. Obviously, this is a fictionalized proposal from the mind of an accomplished Bulgarian novelist, Georgi Gospodinov (who, btw, won the very prestigious 2023 International Booker Award for this volume.)
The premise of the book is that a mysterious character by the name of Gaustine (who we never know much about) comes up with a scheme to open a series of institutions for Alzheimer’s patients that enable them to “go back” and be amongst things from their past — in hopes of helping them retrieve vestiges of their lives that they can now barely remember:
“Gaustine opened the first ‘clinic of the past,’ an institution that offers inspired treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces past decades in minute detail, allowing patients to transport themselves back in time to unlock what is left of their fading memories. …The flotsam and jetsam of the past are collected, from 1960’s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to nostalgic scents and even wisps of afternoon light.”(Gospodinov, inside dust jacket)
Those suffering from Alzheimer’s, of course, perceive the world differently, experiencing confusion, having difficulty recognizing even familiar faces and misinterpreting visual cues. Additionally, part of the disease is living in the past. According to P.H. Tsai, a neurologist with Banner Alzheimer’s Institute:
“Memory loss is a common symptom of Alzheimer’s and other dementia. But we believe the brain has different memory systems. For example. We have seen people with dementia who do not remember what they had for breakfast but could still remember how to play piano beautifully.” (S. Thurrett, BannerHealth.com)
Additionally:
“People with Alzheimer’s disease often revisit the past because the disease affects the part of the brain responsible for forming and holding recent memories. So people rapidly forget recent information and events. But remote, old memories are stored in other parts of the brain that have not been affected by the disease.” (S. Thurrett)
Older memories are often nostalgic, with emotional meaning. They may offer a feeling of warmth, familiarity, security and comfort for those with Alzheimer’s:
“Even if the details of the memories fade, the emotions may remain. Scents, sounds or objects may trigger nostalgic memories. As problems with memory and thinking get worse, positive emotions can help a person with Alzheimer’s disease have a better quality of life.” (S. Thurrett)
Creating new memories is a good thing, because “dementia is characterized by not doing that. Indeed:
“Individuals with dementia often have smaller brain growth, which may account for some of their ability to recall deceased loved ones more vividly than those in front of them. Thus, you should count yourself fortunate if, as you get older, your recollections of your early years become less vivid. It’s an indication that you’re living in the now and creating new memories of today. There are trade-offs in life that sometimes require forgetting in order to remember.” (M. Pietarinen, “Are Your New Memories Replacing Your Old Ones?” Humans, February, 2024)
Memory loss is often a symptom of dementia. This includes:
“not being able to create new memories. This means that recent events are not ‘recorded’ in a person’s memory and so cannot be recalled later. For example, the person may forget a conversation they have just had.” (Alzheimer’s Society, “Memory Loss and Dementia.”)
So, it’s easy to see why a set-up like the one Gaustine created might offer a lot of comfort and a feeling of safety for those with a dementia. It soon created quite a buzz and began drawing a lot of attention. But, then something interesting happened with the project:
“The next step came when Gaustine decided to open these clinics of the past not only to patients, but to their friends and family, too. Then we had people showing up who wanted to live in certain years, without having any connection with a patient at all. People who didn’t feel at home in the present time. I suspect that some, if not most of them, did it out of nostalgia for the happiest years of their lives, while others did it out of fear that the world was irrevocably headed downhill and that the future was canceled. A strange anxiety hung in the air, you could catch a whiff of its faint scent when inhaling.” (Gospodinov, page 99)
So, what had started out as clinic specifically for dementia patients began to grow and evolve into something else:
“The point of the experiment was to create a ‘protected time.’ A time shelter. We wanted to open up a window into time and let the sick live there, along with their loved ones. To give a chance for elderly couples, who had spent their whole live together, stay together. Daughters and sons, more often daughters, who wanted to spend another month or even a year with their parent, before things completely went to seed. But they didn’t want to stand next to their beds in a sterile white room. The idea was for them to stay together in the same year, to meet up in the only possible ‘place’ — in the year that still glimmered in the parent’s fading memory.” (Gospodinov, page 100)
There began to be concerns about the ethics of admitting “technically healthy” people to the clinic:
“Was it ethical to mix them in with the patients? Or perhaps the right to the past is inviolable and it should be valid for everyone, as Gaustine liked to say. People wanted it, and if not here, they would find it elsewhere. In fact, all sorts of quickly cobbled-together hotels for the past were starting to pop up.” (Gospodinov, page 99)
So, as humans, is it really our inalienable right to dismiss the present while embracing the past and not letting go? Do we seek out the past for the reasons stated above? That “people didn’t feel at home in the present time and that some, if not most of them, did it out of nostalgia for the happiest years of their lives.” But, it must also be noted that “others did it out of fear that the world was irrevocably headed downhill and that the future was cancelled.” (Gospodinov, Page 99)
Look, most novels, especially the really good ones, are written with a point of view in mind. In this book, I believe that author is not only making a statement about dealing with dementia, but also about how many healthy people without the disease currently have a need to reclaim the past —perhaps as a way of forestalling the future that they may unconsciously want to avoid. And, why are Gospodinov’s hypothetical characters choosing the past over the present? I think there are two main reasons.
First, unhappiness with the present and fear of what the future might bring. In a recent PEW poll taken just after the recent presidential election, only “29% of Americans say they’re satisfied with the way things are going, while 70% of Americans say they are dissatisfied.” (PEW Research Center, November 24, 2024) Even a Pew Poll from 2023 noted: “Americans take a dim view of the nation’s future, look more positively at the past.” (PEW Research Center, April 24, 2023)
Second, Perhaps the past, with all of its comforting memories, has more appeal than the future. There is aways talk of the “good old days.” When we reminisce about the past, the tendency, according to many psychologists is to “unconsciously distort or embellish our memories.” Per Daniel Schacter, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, “the process of retrieving memories is highly reconstructive and prone to various biases.” Which means that we will usually prefer to reminisce about positive experiences, while negative emotions will fade more quickly by comparison. (Charlotte Lieberman, “Why Romanticize the Past?”, NYT April 2, 2021
Our personal framing of a memory makes it much more satisfying to recollect — editing out, as it were, the less pleasing aspects. Thus, in effect, creating our own ‘history” — embedding subjectivity within our memories. And, perhaps with a desire to go back and re-visit key decisions we made in our life and essentially “change the past.”
So, for most humans, and let’s say for those non-patients interested in entering one of Gaustives’s “clinics of the past,” planting a foot back in the past may help them as they head into the future.
“To plan for the future, we have to look to the past. In less-than-ideal times, we may recruit positive memories in order to envision the future with greater hope, motivation and resilience.” (Lieberman)
So, while Gaustive’s “experiment” initially seemed to be a sincere effort to improve the lives of dementia patients, it ultimately grew to somehow include non-patients as well. Indeed,
“But as the charade becomes more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic to escape from the dead-end of their lives — a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present.” (Gospodinov, dust cover)
I think that Gospodinov is delivering a message about the past, both for Alzheimer’s patients and for healthy people: the past does have its place. If you are suffering from dementia, then your past, with its fond and comforting memories, can offer a safe haven for your tortured consciousness. But, if, as a relatively healthy subject, you find yourself continually seeking solace in the past, then that may tell you something about how successful you are in dealing with the present; and it may also be an indication of the concern you have for the future. So, whether you are losing memory as a result of disease, or choosing to deny real memories while replacing them with embellished versions, and re-writing history, you are succumbing to an attack from the past — a “past that invades the present.” Some people choose the safety of the past; for others, it’s not choice, it’s all they have.
I’ll end with this quote from the very end of Time Shelter. Essentially, we are on a life-long mission to retain our memories and to remember who we are. When we begin to seriously misremember and misconstrue our memories — or even worse, to not remember who we are — then the past has won the battle:
“The less memory, the more past. As long as you remember, you hold at bay the times gone by. Like lighting a fire in the middle of the forest at night. Demons and wolves are crouching all around, the beasts of the past are tightening the circle, but they still don’t dare step into it. The allegory is simple. As long as the flame of memory burns, you are the master. If it starts to die out, the howling grows louder and the beasts draw closer. The pack of the past.” (Gospodiov, page 294)
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Resonance 