This morning, before breakfast, I played Chopin’s Mazurka from memory. I learned it when I was thirteen years old. I still remember the phone number from our first apartment. I remember who I lent twenty złotys to in 1978.
I also remember exactly what I ate for dinner yesterday. Krupnik soup, a piece of fish, and beets. The only thing I couldn’t find this morning was my glasses. I searched for ten minutes before realizing they were on my nose the whole time.
Old age likes to remind you who’s in charge. People always ask me what I take for my memory. They expect me to name a pill, a powder, or some drops. Something they can order online before the video ends.
I don’t have anything like that to give you. There is no guaranteed way to keep dementia away. Anyone who promises you a guarantee either doesn’t know much or wants to sell you something. What I can tell you is what I did for many years to keep my own head off the shelf.
And what my sister’s illness taught me. My name is Irena Kaczmarek. For thirty-eight years, I taught children how to play the piano. On Sundays, I helped at the organ in our church.
My older sister Zosia was always quicker than me. She could hear a melody once and play it by heart by evening. She counted faster in her head than the cashier could on her machine. She remembered everyone’s birthdays, recipes, the names of our teachers, and exactly what someone said at a wedding when they shouldn’t have said anything at all.
After she turned seventy, she started losing small things. First the keys, then the appointments. She would ask three times what day it was. She put milk in the cupboard and sugar in the fridge.
The family said Zosia had always been absent-minded. She wasn’t. When you’ve known someone your whole life, you notice the difference. Later, she forgot my name.
She looked at her own son and asked when he would come home from school, even though his hair had gone grey. In the end, she couldn’t eat a meal on her own. I watched her and felt a fear I had never known before. I thought to myself, this can’t happen to me.
I know now that was an unfair thought. Zosia didn’t get sick because she was weak or lazy, or because she did something wrong. Dementia is an illness, not a punishment for not finishing a crossword puzzle. It can come to anyone, even someone who lived sensibly.
So I had no guarantees. I only had my fear and one question. What could I still do while I still could? The first thing was the simplest to say and the hardest to do.
Every day, I made myself do something that truly required thought. I didn’t play songs on the piano that my fingers could play on their own. I took a piece I had made a mistake on the day before. I played slowly, sometimes just two bars at a time, until my head and my hands found each other again.
I did crossword puzzles, but not the easy ones. When I didn’t know the answer, I didn’t flip to the last page. I left the blank space and came back to it after tea. I also learned things for no practical reason at all.
One month, I memorized a new psalm. Another time, my granddaughter taught me how to send a photo with the phone. She showed me what to press maybe forty times, but the forty-first time was mine. It’s not about getting smarter every day.
It’s about not always choosing what is easy and familiar. Television can entertain you, but it can’t run your life for you all day long. The second thing is people. I’ll be honest.
After one hundred and three years, not everyone impresses me. Some people talk endlessly. Others only listen so they can immediately tell you about themselves. And my friend Krysia cheats at cards so clumsily that it’s more insulting than the cheating itself.
Still, we meet every Thursday. You have to remember whose turn it is, count the points, follow three conversations at once, and notice when Krysia hides an ace under the tablecloth. That is more work for the brain than any workbook. After my husband died, I didn’t want to see anyone.
I closed the curtains. I didn’t answer the phone. I ate alone and was glad when evening came, because then I could go to bed without pretending the day had any meaning. One Sunday, my neighbor knocked and said, “Irena, you may not like me, but you will open this door.
” So I did. She sat with me for ten minutes. A week later, I went to church with her. Then the card games came back.
I started answering the phone again. I won’t say that conversation cures dementia. I’ll only say that loneliness can quiet a person so completely that they stop using words, names, and curiosity. If someone talks to you and you just nod because you can’t hear well, get your hearing checked.
A hearing aid doesn’t make you old. Pretending you understand everything steals the conversation from you. The third thing is movement. I don’t run.
I don’t do squats with a woman in tight clothes from the internet. My knees have worked hard enough in this life. But every day, I get up from my chair. I walk to the gate and go a little way down the street.
When it rains, I walk from the kitchen to the window and back. Sometimes I put my hands on the table and do a few simple exercises my physiotherapist showed me. As much as is safe. It’s easy to say you’ve walked enough in your life.
But your body doesn’t understand retirement. When you stop using it, it becomes harder and harder to get up, to get there, to meet someone, to cook a meal on your own. Movement doesn’t bring immortality. But it helps me keep an eye on my blood pressure, my balance, my sleep, and my independence.
And all of that matters for the head too. If someone has a bad heart, gets dizzy, or hasn’t moved in a long time, don’t start with heroics. Ask a doctor or a physiotherapist, and start with something safe. The fourth thing is sleep.
At half past nine in the evening, my day is over. I don’t care who won the show, who argued on the news, or who is calling just to pass on someone else’s gossip. I turn off the television. I put the phone away.
I air out the room. I go to bed at about the same time every night. Not every night is good. Sometimes my hip hurts.
Sometimes I wake up at three in the morning and remember a conversation from fifty years ago where I should have answered differently. But I don’t turn the night into a second day. When I don’t sleep well for a while, I notice it immediately. I find words more slowly.
I struggle to focus. I get more irritable, and then even Krysia seems worse than usual. If you are always sleepy, snore loudly, wake up gasping for air, or can’t sleep for weeks, tell a doctor. Not everything is fixed by herbal drops.
The fifth thing is on the plate. But there is no single miracle food for memory. I eat ordinary food. Vegetable soup, groats, an egg, beans, fish when I have it, a piece of chicken, an apple, sauerkraut.
But not half a jar at once, because salt has its own opinion. I don’t count every grain. I don’t live on salad. I’ll have a piece of cheesecake sometimes, but cheesecake is never my breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Over the years, I cut back on ready-made meals, very salty cold cuts, and food that makes you full but gives your body almost nothing. I keep an eye on my blood pressure. I watch my sugar. I take my medicines exactly as the doctor ordered, not as my neighbor or an advertisement suggests.
For memory, the whole way of life matters more than any single juice, nut, or capsule. If someone is selling you certainty in a small box, keep your wallet closed. And then there was the last thing. The reason to get up in the morning.
After my husband died, after my sister died, after many friends died, there was a time when I felt that everything important had already happened without me. Then my great-granddaughter Ola asked me to teach her how to play. She sat at the piano, put her fingers in the wrong place, and said, “Grandma, will we make it in time? ” I answered, “If you practice, I’ll try to make it.
” After that, she came every Saturday. I had to prepare the sheet music, remember the exercises, correct her rhythm, and make sure she didn’t cheat at playing the way Krysia cheats at cards. I was needed by someone again. The reason doesn’t have to be big.
It can be a grandchild, a dog waiting for its walk, a row of tomatoes, a choir, a neighbor who needs groceries brought over, a book you haven’t finished. It’s not about a great mission. It’s about something that reminds you that tomorrow has a task for you. Now listen to me carefully.
If someone starts asking the same questions over and over, gets lost in familiar places, can’t manage their bills, their medicines, or a simple recipe, don’t wait until it gets worse. A crossword puzzle won’t replace a doctor. Memory problems don’t always mean dementia. Sometimes medicines cause it.
Sometimes it’s the thyroid, a deficiency, depression, hearing loss, or bad sleep. Look for the cause. Don’t just say, “It’s old age. ”
I still remember a lot.
But I also write my appointments in a calendar. I put my keys in one place. I ask my granddaughter to check important letters. Wisdom isn’t about doing everything alone.
It’s about knowing when to accept help. I don’t know why my memory has held on so well. I’m sure there is some luck in it, some health, and things that were completely beyond my control. I won’t say I deserved a sharp mind more than my sister did.
I’ll only say that every day, I give my head work, people, movement, sleep, ordinary food, and a reason to wait for tomorrow. Not as a guarantee. As care. In a moment, I’ll sit down at the piano.
At four o’clock, Krysia will come with the cards. She will cheat. I will count. And we will both pretend we haven’t noticed a thing.
As for you, don’t rush to buy memory pills after this video. Call someone who has been sitting alone for a long time. Maybe the conversation you have with them today will be the hardest and most needed exercise their mind gets.