Eddy is warm, charming and friendly. He laughs a lot. He seems at first like an average kindly grandfather. But 15 years ago, a virus attacked his brain and destroyed the part where memories are made. He can remember his childhood and being a sailor in the Navy, but cannot remember anything since 1960. As far as he knows, petrol is cheap and the moon landing never happened.
Since his illness, the only people he knows are the ones in the room with him. On a typical morning, he will get up and have breakfast, then go back to bed to listen to the radio. Often he will forget that he has eaten, so will get up and have breakfast again and return to bed. Sometimes he’ll have breakfast a third time.
Without a memory, he is trapped in the present, between a past he can’t remember and a future he can’t imagine. He lives a quiet life and doesn’t even know that he has a memory problem. “He’s happy all the time,” says his daughter Carol, who lives nearby. “I guess it’s because he doesn’t have any stress in his life.”
For Anna, in contrast, the past is always there. “My memory flows like a movie,” she says. She remembers who called her on the phone at 12.34 on Sunday August 3, 1986. She remembers that on March 28, 1992, she had lunch with her father at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She remembers what they ate, every word of the conversation. She remembers great world events and shopping trips. She remembers the weather. Every day is there, every detail.
Anna believes it is something that happens to her naturally, but it is not an ability she welcomes. “I remember the good things, which is nice. But I also remember the bad things, every bad choice. Ten years later, I still get angry with myself for making the wrong decisions. I don’t forgive myself for a lot of things. I would love for just five minutes to be a simple person and not have all this stuff in my head. Most people call it a gift. But I call it a burden.”
Scientists are unsure why Anna’s memory is so extraordinary, but both of these cases demonstrate the importance of memory. Eddy’s case shows us how essential memory is for us to function; but Anna’s shows that if our memories are to function properly, we also need to be able to forget.
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