A friend recently complained of his poor memory. It seemed that his memory is deteriorating fast with age. That’s quite common, I told him, as I supposed I’m also facing the same problem despite my younger age as compared to him. I seem to be more forgetful nowadays and always misplaced stuffs and failed to find them. The worst incident was a couple of months ago after attending our company function at One World Hotel; I failed to locate my car and had to search for almost 45 minutes before finding it.
My wife recently told me a joke of an elderly man lost his car in the market at Sitiawan and quickly lodged a police report soon after he found that his car was missing. The kind policemen then drove him to the place where he lost his car to help him searching for it, partly suspecting that the old man could have forgotten where he parked his car instead of the car being stolen. As there was no sign of the car, they came to a conclusion that the car was stolen. The elderly man was so upset and disappointingly he rang up his wife to inform her of their car being stolen. To his surprise, he was told by his wife that their car was nicely parked in their garage.
Then the elderly man started recalling that he had in fact ridden his bike to the market in the morning and forgotten about it after shopping and thought that he had driven his car to the market instead. The policemen could only shake their heads in disbelief as after spending hours to help up this forgetful man searching for his car and assisting him in lodging a report, the car was in fact not stolen but mistakenly thought so by the forgetful old man.
Then I recalled my great-grand mother, a tough lady that despite her age of more than 80 years old and her stooped back, could still walk faster than some of the obese youngsters. One fine morning, I heard my late mother yelling that our great-grand mother was missing. The old lady had been talking for days that she wanted to go back to Kodiang to be with his son but due to her poor health, my grand mother insisted that she stayed with us so that she could take care of her.
Our stubborn great-grand mother then decided to go her own way by walking home since her plead was not granted. After noticing her missing, my mom and I then cycled around our house and finally found her walking with her tongkat, carrying a plastic bag with her clothing inside, at a few kilometers away from our house. When we found her we asked what was she trying to do. She told us that she wanted to go back to Kodiang but forgotten where her house was, with a broad smile on her face.
A few days later when her health was improving, we sent her back to Kodiang and not too long after that, the old lady passed away peacefully in her own house at Kodiang. Somehow she could have sensed out that she would be leaving this world and chose to be in her own house when she breathed the last breath.
Our memory tends to get faded with age and there are incurable diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease that will damage our brains and take away all our memories. Even the former President of America, Ronald Reagan in his late life couldn't even remember that he was once the President of America. In November, 1984, in his hand-written letter, he told the world that he was inflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, and beginning his journey into the sunset of his life.
Aging is a normal process that everyone has to go through.
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