IT’S THE DOOR’S FAULT

Ever walk into a room with some purpose in mind, only to completely forget what that purpose was? Turns out, doors themselves are to blame for these strange memory lapses. Psychologists at the University of Notre Dame have discovered that passing through a doorway triggers what's known as an event boundary in the mind, separating one set of thoughts and memories from the next. Your brain files away the thoughts you had in the previous room and prepares a blank slate for the new locale. It's not aging, it's the door! Thank goodness for studies like this.

The above paragraph was sent to me by a close friend. We share the same birth year and the same proclivity to walk into a room and immediately forget why we were entering that room in the first place. When we do that often enough as we are now doing, our first thought is Alzheimer’s or the onset of some type of dementia. To allay my fears I often start going through the multiplication tables just to prove to myself that I am not losing it and that there has to be some other explanation for this sudden loss of memory. Now that I know that it is the door’s fault, I can rest a little easier.

But what about those times when I am in a conversation with my wife while driving down the road or sitting at the kitchen table and a thought comes to mind that I want to share; but by the time it is my turn to speak, I have forgotten just what it was that was so important for me to impart? The car door has been closed for a while and there is no door in the kitchen. Whom do I now blame in order to calm my fears of losing my mind as I am growing older?

Actually I have found an excuse for my forgetfulness: information overload. Because I am so intelligent, because I have read so many books and articles, because I have absorbed so many facts and figures over the years, the computer in my brain is slowing down because it has amassed so much knowledge. I am not a six-year-old whose brain is quite empty and who can learn a new song in five minutes. It takes me five days because my brain is so full. No wonder I forget so quickly sometimes.

Works for me, does that explanation. In fact any explanation for my sometimes forgetfulness works. But no explanation, no matter how farfetched, sets aside the truth that I am growing older and that the end of my life draws closer and closer with every passing breathe and every fading memory and forgotten thought. It’s not dementia that frightens us so much it is death, or certainly the awareness that I am closer to death every day.

Fortunately those forgetful moments, at least in the present, even though they arrive more and more, do not dominant my life. For that I am thankful even as it is embarrassing when I have to admit that I forgot what I wanted to say or why I walked into that room. Perhaps if those moments were more and more frequent, as they are for so many of my contemporaries, I might not be so flippant as I now am. Perhaps I would really be worried and would look for the truth rather than some made-up excuse even if I did not want to know the truth. As they say, ageing is not for the timid or the faint of heart.