A Space Beyond Language

What I’ve learned from what my mother has forgotten

- Damian Rogers

Ten years ago, after my mother was diagnosed with dementia at age sixty-one, she was in free fall. She lived alone and had lost her job. In a state of desperation, she began a mnemonic project of her own design. She tried to memorize a list of 150 animal names.

I didn’t know where this idea came from. It seemed like her plan was to prove to the doctors that there was nothing wrong with her. She copied this list out over and over and over, filling notebooks, sketchbooks, the insides of novel and self-help-book jacket covers. Even after she entered an assisted-living facility, she continued to compulsively copy out this list of animals. I think it became a way to focus her fear into some kind of activity. I even found the names of animals scrawled across two of her pillowcases. I couldn’t help picturing these animals running through her dreams.