Is A Good Memory Good?

Remember: Ignorance Is Bliss

Dad’s report card from Northwestern in 1937. Like other nerds, his only weak subject was phys ed — possibly because he never forgot “that incident” in a high school football game.

My father told me his greatest attribute was his memory. He got almost all A’s throughout his academic life, was high school valedictorian, top of his class at Northwestern, and had a successful career as a corporate accountant. But he said he never had to study or work very hard. He simply read something once and retained it.

As Dad got older, he started suffering from migraines. By his 60s, he often cried uncontrollably, couldn’t get out of bed, and was repeatedly hospitalized for depression. When he died at 90, he was miserable, delusional, and perhaps worst, had lost his precious memory.

One’s memory shouldn’t be judged by quantity or durability. Is life a competition for who can remember the most stuff?

In trying to make sense of his incredibly normal life and tragically unhappy demise, I fixated on whether his ability to remember everything might actually have been an inability to forget anything. Factoring in his right-wing, sexist, racist, World War 2 veteran, angry white man-in-the-grey-flannel-suit attitude, the resulting lifetime of memories may have been too great a burden for even his muscular mind to withstand.