“Caesar’s last breath” is my shorthand for all of these conjunctions, which I have, over my lifetime, secreted in the hallowed space where I guard my most precious insights. These imbrications, indeed, stand for the main purpose of my life: being connected, with honesty and integrity, to the mineral, vegetable, animal, astronomical, and cosmological worlds, particularly that infinitesimal subset of the animal kingdom, my fellow humans, with whom I have in common a wondrously complex brain that gives us access to the “truth of the Imagination.”
Imagine: The calculations that Fermi aficionados make for Caesar’s last breath can also be made for every creature that has ever sojourned on this, our Earth. It means that all my life I have sucked into my lungs molecules from not only the last breath of animals and people I have loved, but also from their exhalations at any of the moments I choose from their biographies: Marissa’s and Newton’s first yells after gulping air for the first time; Peter’s wholehearted “Ja” on our wedding day; my mother’s pant-pant-blows as she labored to push me into the world; the wondrous, tiny spiral galaxy my father created every time he slowly let out the fragrant smoke from his cigarette; the sorrowful plaints of my Kalahari grandfather when he came upon his fiancée and her parents dead of the flu during the pandemic of 1918; the awed cries of my Dutch ancestors when they spotted Table Mountain from their sailing vessel in the bay; and the joyous vocalizations of my bi-pedal Paleolithic cousin, Lucy, as she clutched a rock with her opposable-thumbed fist, smote open a termite mound, and fell upon the plump and juicy morsels that swarmed from the tunneled habitat.
Imagine: Those who love me breathe me.
Imagine: A final forever. And then: no you, no I, no tomorrow, no yesterday, no names, no memory, no molecules: matter itself released into energy, single photons stretched across light-years of space.
But here and now, still: the magisteria of a mind, the grant of an interval to sound the ordinances of a world without being.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge Kirstin Scott and Shen Christenson, who not only read and read and read, but also gave me ideas, food, and shoulders to cry on.
I am grateful to my Family Practitioner, Dr. Shana Eborn, who has seen Peter and me through the first five years of my post-diagnosis dementia with patience, empathy, and honest answers. I also would like to acknowledge my neuropsychologist, Dr. Janiece Pompa, who has been utterly generous with timely information and matching support.
I thank my neighbor Diane Bond for generously allowing me to include entries from my Dementia Field Notes about her and her late husband, Bob Bond, and their struggle with his dementia.
I am beholden to my husband, Peter Saunders, for retrieving and editing the photographs and to my daughter-in-law, Cheryl, for creating the illustrations that appear in my book.
I thank Stephen Corey, Jenny Gropp, and Doug Carlson—editors at The Georgia Review (GR): Were it not for the extraordinary attention and help they gave my dementia essay during its first launch into print, it may never have progressed along the path toward a book. My gratitude also goes to GR’s business manager Brenda Keen, who did the necessary business work for the subsequent reprints.
I am blessed to have Kate Garrick for a literary agent: she knew when to enthuse and when to enjoin me to repair, modify, cut. I am also thankful for Scott Korb and Cathy Jaque’s reading of and feedback on the manuscript.
I am thankful for Paul Whitlatch, senior editor at Hachette Books, who believed in my book from the start. Paul led me through the logistics of changing a manuscript into a book with a candor that twins his brilliance. I acknowledge the work of editorial assistant Lauren Hummel, who meticulously attended to even the smallest detail, and the rest of Hachette’s A-team who gave their expertise to bring my book into the world.
* The names of places and people and other identifying information associated with this story have been changed at the request of the person whose story forms the core of my recollection and to whom I refer as Fanus.
* My father, Boshoff Steenekamp.
* Several members of our family are on the autism spectrum, fortunately at the high-functioning end. Some of us are self-diagnosed, while others have been identified as such by the psychiatric establishment.
* Moth Radio Hour ’s disclaimer before their weekly show in which participants tell stories from their lives, rehearsed but without notes.
* My school friend Erna Schutte, now Buber-deVilliers Schutte, sketched my two older brothers during a visit to our farm.
† Boshoff’s self-portrait, Boetman, 2000.
* The hopes we had been led to harbor for the efficacy of the gesture in preventing all sibling rivalry, not surprisingly, turned out to have been fictional.
* It is of course no longer politically correct to say “servant” (even in South Africa), but this is how we then referred to a job now titled “domestic assistant.”
* A Dutch book that was part of our Afrikaans curriculum.
* Chairs with seats made out of rawhide strips woven in an open lattice. My mother gave me one of the six chairs when we left for America, and subsequently one to each of my siblings.
* Dagga is the name of a South African species of marijuana, witblits a raw spirit, colorless, and with a powerful punch.
* Hendrik recently told me his name was “Pietman,” but Willeman was how I had thought of him for decades.
* Additional topsy-turviness: The foal was retroactively named Khumba, after the title character in a South African animated film by Triggerfish Animation Studios, after the scientific Quagga Project that created the real-life foal had died due to a lack of funding. “The Quagga Revival,” as previously cited.
* Not her real name.
* Big Bang story I told my children and now tell my grandchildren.
Notes
Your name is Rock: The sentence is a praise song chanted to the great Zulu warrior king Shaka, circa 1787 (September 22, 1828). Ezekiel Mphahlele translated it to English. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Copyright 2016, Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Web. Accessed October 31, 2017.
Chapter One: Telling Who I Am before I Forget
depriv[ing] sufferers from be[ing] able: Definition of dementia used by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health (NIH). Web. Accessed August 25, 2011.
Call it what you like: Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 6.57–62. Web. Shmoop University. Accessed August 22, 2014.
When life itself seems lunatic: Man of La Mancha, 1972 musical film based on Miguel Cervantes’s seventeenth-century novel The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. Directed by Arthur Hiller. Screenplay by Dale Wasserman. Web. IMDb Quotes. Accessed September 8, 2014.
felt the wind on the wing of madness: “My Heart Laid Bare,” The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations. Web. Googlebooks. August 21, 2014.
Chapter Two: Quantum Puff Adders and Fractional Memories
Illustration of the limbic system by Cheryl Saunders, as informed by “The Limbic System,” Wikipedia.org, and “The Limbic System,” from Indiana University’s Web Dictionary. Accessed February 10, 2012.
We simply cannot understand thought: Rebecca Sato, “Vulcans Nixed: You Can’t Have Logic without Emotion,” Great Discoveries Channel: The Daily Galaxy, May 29, 2009. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/05/vulcans-nixed-y.html. Accessed December 14, 2011.
to pass on their electrical excitement: Jonah Lehrer, “The Forgetting Pill,” Wired, March 2012, 84.
every long-term memory: Lehrer, as previously cited, 93.
formed and then rebuilt: This quotation and the ones that follow are from Lehrer, as previously cited, 90.
English labels for the various Puff Adder diagrams by Cheryl Saunders.
The faster you go: “Albert Einstein Quotes,” Quoteauthors.com. http://www.quoteauthors.com/albert-einstein-quotes. Accessed September 8, 2014.
Finally, from so little sleeping: Miguel Cervantes, Chapter 29, �
��About the Famous Adventure of the Enchanted Boat,” The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, trans. John Ormsby, 1604. Cervantes Project, Texas A&M University and Universidad de Castilla–La Mancha. Web. Accessed November 6, 2012.
are not of the highly imaginative sort: John Ormsby, translator’s preface: “II. About Cervantes and Don Quixote.” The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes. Gutenberg Project. Web. Accessed October 3, 2014.
bounded by the mountains: Miguel Cervantes, Chapter 14, “Wherein the Dead Shepherd’s Verses of Despair Are Set Down, with Other Unexpected Incidents.” The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, as previously cited.
so I won’t die of Truth: Paraphrase of Ray Bradbury’s poem/essay “We Have Our Arts So We Don’t Die of Truth,” Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity (New York: HarperCollins, 2015).
Chapter Three: The Grammar of the Disappearing Self
because love here has invented language: Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince (New York: Penguin Books, 1973).
prosiness… didacticism, and… reliance on whimsy: Susan Eilenberg, London Review of Books 24, no. 17 (September 5, 2002).
everyone from linguists to neuroscientists to her own husband: Roger Highfield, “Decline of Iris Murdoch in Her Own Words,” Telegraph, October 24, 2011.
closer and closer apart: John Bayley, Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch (London: Time Warner Books UK, 2002).
“hugely achieving” woman: Anne Rowe, “Critical Reception in England of Iris: A Memoir by John Bayley,” Iris Murdoch Newsletter 13 (1999): 9–10.
disclosures about Murdoch: Pamela Osborn, “‘How Can One Describe Real People?’: Iris Murdoch’s Literary Afterlife,” Academia, www.academia.edu/12898733/How_Can_One_Describe_Real_People_Iris_Murdochs_Literary_Afterlife. Accessed September 25, 2016. The point is Osborn’s, who cites Derrida in her essay.
Bayley demonstrates: Anne Rowe, as previously cited.
compartments hermetically sealed: Mary Gordon, “A True Case of Love That Does Not Alter When It Alteration Finds” [book review], New York Times, December 20, 1998.
I always thought it would be vulgar: John Bayley, Elegy for Iris (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).
the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease on spontaneous writing: ScienceBlog article from University College London (UCL). “Iris Murdoch’s Last Novel Reveals First Signs of Alzheimer’s Disease.” © 2004. Web. Accessed November 1, 2011.
Susten poujin drom: Bayley, Elegy for Iris, as previously cited.
the grammar of a particular language: V. S. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2011).
known to disrupt the brain’s: “Iris Murdoch’s Last Novel,” as previously cited.
unfamiliar feeling of writer’s block: Ibid.
holiness of the heart’s affections: John Keats, letter to Benjamin Bailey, November 22, 1817. http://www.john-keats.com/briefe/221117.htm.
Chapter Four: This Is Your Brain on the Fritz
If your desire is fixed to follow me: Virgil. Adapted from Aeneid, book 2, lines 350–352. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/228/228-h/228-h.htm. Accessed February 13, 2012.
crinkling it up to fit: The idea of building the brain out of a modeling substance is from Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek, Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).
The reptilian brain: InnerBody.com. Accessed September 9, 2014.
The physical slowing: Bill Adams, Stray Ideas. http://stray-ideas.blogspot.com. Accessed March 25, 2012.
The wrinkled neocortex illustration is by Cheryl Saunders, adapted from the Journal of Cosmology. Web. Accessed March 12, 2012.
Comparison of the brain surfaces of various species: Patricia Kinser, “Brain Structures and Their Functions.” Serendip/Bryn Mawr College. Web. Accessed January 19, 2012. Illustrations used with the author’s permission.
An axon is a long threadlike: Ka Xiong Charand, “Nerve Cell,” HyperPhysics, Georgia State University. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/biology/nervecell.html. Accessed February 15, 2012.
Illustration of the structure of a typical neuron by Cheryl Saunders, adapted from Ka Xiong Charand, as previously cited.
In a living brain, cortical neurons: Nachum Dafny, “Overview of the Nervous System,” Neuroscience Online. http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s2/chapter01.html. Accessed February 23, 2012.
even as we are elderly and dying: Eric Jensen, “One of the Five Greatest Discoveries in Neuroscience History Is Being Largely Ignored,” Brainbased, Jensen Learning. http://www.jensenlearning.com/news/discoveries-in-neuroscience/brain-based-teaching. Accessed February 19, 2012.
neurons wither and die: “Adult Neurogenesis,” Brain Briefings (Society for Neuroscience), June 2007.
make social judgments: James Shreeve, “Beyond the Brain,” National Geographic 207, no. 3 (2005): 22–23.
On a biological level, the acquisition: Peter S. Eriksson, Ekaterina Perfilieva, et al., “Neurogenesis in the Adult Human Hippocampus,” Nature Medicine 4 (1998): 1313–1317.
massive state of flux: Louise Carpenter, “Revealed: The Science behind Teenage Laziness.” Telegraph, February 14, 2015.
Some scientists have proposed: “Adult Neurogenesis,” Brain Briefings, as previously cited.
the idea of brain plasticity: Michael S. Gazzaniga, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain (New York: Ecco, 2015).
wide as a watermelon: Anne Sexton, “The Big Heart,” PoemHunter. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-big-heart-2. Accessed March 27, 2015.
fresh from God: Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop. Web. Accessed February 26, 2015. The sentence from which I quote reads, “It is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.”
the hole “toward the front”: Amélie A. Walker, “Neolithic Surgery.” Archeology 50, no. 5 (1997).
like a bee sting: “Intracranial Pressure Monitoring,” MedlinePlus. https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003411.htm. Accessed August 9, 2011.
significant noise and vibrations: G. Farzanegan et al., “Does Drill-Induced Noise Have an Impact on Sensorineural Hearing during Craniotomy Procedure?” British Journal of Neurosurgery 24, no. 1 (2010): 40–45.
Sir Charles Lyell formulated the concept: Charles Lyell, The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1863).
there was no unifying theory: Eric A. Zillmer, Mary V. Spiers, et al. Principles of Neuropsychology, 2nd ed. (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2008).
shellfish brimming with: Will Block, “Did Shellfish Omega-3s Spur Brain Evolution?” Life Enhancement. http://www.life-enhancement.com/magazine/article/2238-did-shellfish-omega-3s-spur-brain-evolution. Accessed February 12, 2012.
Parke [with] goodly meadows: Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimage. Archive.org. https://archive.org/details/purchashispilgri00purc. Accessed October 21, 2014. Coleridge was reading Purchas’s book while composing “Kubla Kahn.”
The input role of the temporal lobe: Nachum Dafny. “Overview of the Nervous System,” as previously cited.
suffer[ed] a sea-change : William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Ariel’s song.
Eternal, and eternal I endure: Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, canto 3, lines 8–9, The Harvard Classics (1909–1914), Bartleby.com. http://www.bartleby.com/20/103.html. Accessed March 27, 2015.
Name something else: Pattiann Rogers, “The Family Is All There Is,” EnviroArts. http://arts.envirolink.org/literary_arts/PRogers_Family.html. Accessed February 26, 2015.
the flow of energy between: Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (London: W. W. Norton, 1976).
danger knows full well: William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. Cited in Aidan Coleman and Abbie Thomas, Julius Caesar Googlebooks. Accessed February 25, 2015.
Chapter Five: Of Madness and Love I
he will almost always beat you: David Owen, “The Psychology of Space,” New Yorker, January 21, 2013, 29.
local changes in tissue content: H. J. Rosen, S. C. Allison, et al., “Neuroanatomical Correlates of Behavioural Disorders in Dementia,” Brain 128, pt. 11 (2005): 2612–2525.
an organ of “mass action”: Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 47. Gazzaniga’s source is K. S. Lashley, Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence: A Quantitative Study of Injuries to the Brain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929).
This place has only three exits: René Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking, trans. from the French by David Coward and E. A. Lovatt (Boston: Shambhala, 1979).
As for me and my house: As for me and my house, [we will serve the Lord]. Joshua 24:15, The Holy Bible, King James Version (Victoria, Australia: Book Printer, World Bible Publishers, n.d.).
the herd began to follow: Serge Schmemann. “Russians Tell Saga of Whales Rescued by an Icebreaker,” New York Times, March 12, 1985.
Turgenev wouldn’t do that: Grace Paley, “A Conversation with My Father,” Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1960; 12th printing, 1985), 78.
Memory's Last Breath Page 25