I Forgot to Remember (Meck)

I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia
Su Meck and Daniel de Vise, 2014
Simon & Schuster
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451685817


Summary
What would you do if you lost your past?

In 1988 Su Meck was twenty-two and married with two children when a ceiling fan in her kitchen fell and struck her on the head, leaving her with a traumatic brain injury that erased all her memories of her life up to that point. Although her body healed rapidly, her memories never returned. Yet after just three weeks in the hospital, Su was released and once again charged with the care of two toddlers and a busy household.

Adrift in a world about which she understood almost nothing, Su became an adept mimic, gradually creating routines and rituals that sheltered her and her family, however narrowly, from the near-daily threat of disaster—or so she thought. Though Su would eventually relearn to tie her shoes, cook a meal, and read and write, nearly twenty years would pass before a series of personally devastating events shattered the “normal” life she had worked so hard to build, and she realized that she would have to grow up all over again.

In her own indelible voice, Su offers us a view from the inside of a terrible injury, with the hope that her story will help give other brain injury sufferers and their families the resolve and courage to build their lives anew. Piercing, heartbreaking, but finally uplifting, this book is the true story of a woman determined to live life on her own terms. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1965
• Raised—near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—A.A. Montgomery College
• Currently—lives in North Hampton, Massachusetts


Su Meck is pursuing degrees in music and book studies from Smith College. I Forgot to Remember is her first book; her work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine. She and her husband, Jim, have three grown children and live in Northampton, Massachusetts, with their two Lab Rescue dogs, Fern and Farley, and their two tuxedo cats, Apollo and Athena.

Book Reviews
[Meck's] understated book, I Forgot to Remember, is more an account than a memoir. The matter-of-fact delivery makes the harrowing details of her ordeal stand out all the more.... Meck expressly wrote the book to show what traumatic brain injury is like. Her message to families is to be patient and to maintain realistic expectations, and never to accuse the injured person of faking symptoms or being intentionally difficult, as she was by her husband and, appallingly, her doctors.... [A] tale of triumph in the search for identity....which succeeds impressively.
Salley Satel - New York Times Book Review


The author recounts her grueling climb back to normalcy after an accident robs her of her memory and sense of self in this heartwrenching true story.
Oprah Magazine


A remarkable memoir....unnervingly honest, straightforward to a degree that makes every other memoir I’ve read seem evasive, self-conscious, and preening.... Unlike that of everyone else around her, [Su Meck’s] adult life wasn’t the result of imagining a happy future, pursuing it with a sense of purpose and then figuring out whether or not her dreams have been fulfilled, betrayed, or misbegotten. Her life was simply ‘the way things were’—until, that is, she realized she was in a position to have some say about that. And seeing her seize that opportunity makes for a happier ending than any fairy tale can offer.
Salon.com


[S]trangely compelling.... [Meck]re-creates the freak accident in her Fort Worth kitchen that ...left her with a...devastating memory loss.... Meck went through the motions of being a wife and mother...without there being any substance behind her facade of normalcy. [She] relates with excruciating honesty her journey out of oblivion.
Publishers Weekly


In this remarkable memoir, Meck chronicles her experiences as she learned to live in ‘a house full of strangers'.... Compelling and inspirational and, one hopes, an important impetus for ongoing brain research.
Booklist

Discussion Questions
1. A memoir by a woman with no memories is a strange concept, but how different is it from other memoirs, which tend to be pulled together from long-ago memories? Do you trust Su’s story more—as it’s been pieced together from many sources—or less than you would a memoir by another writer? What does your answer say about the nature of the genre?

2. Su talks about the difficulties of parenting with no memories of being parented. In what ways are we all reliant on the parenting skills we’ve been taught? Do the roles her children take on in reaction to her needs support your answer?

3. After the accident, Su relies on routines to make her days make sense. How much do you rely on routines to structure your life? If your routines were taken away, would you be as confused as Su? Why or why not?

4. One of the more frustrating experiences for Su was when people believed her memory loss stemmed from psychological, not physical, sources. Do you think it matters what caused it? How might its cause change your perception of Su’s injuries and the difficulties she faces?

5. “I think I was probably trying to prove how genuine I really was, somehow. Because inside I felt so much like a fraud.” Do you think all of us do this on some level? Why or why not?

6. How reliable of a narrator do you think Su is? Do you find it problematic that Jim gets so many basic facts about her accident wrong? What about the memories of the other people, such as her kids? How much do you trust their memories? How does it affect your reading?

7. In what ways do the various settings—the tract house in Texas, the homes in suburban Maryland, the deluxe but stifling hotel in Egypt—shape the events that took place there and how we understand them?

8. Su has no memories of her life before the accident and very few of the years that immediately followed. She is dependent on other people’s memories of what happened to understand her own life. How different is this from the way the rest of us live? Are we all, in some way, a reflection of other people’s ideas about us? Why or why not?

9. Jim is one of the more complicated people in the book. In some ways, he comes off as a saint, helping and teaching and loving Su. On the other hand, he is largely absent, is verbally and physically abusive, and cheats on her. Do you ultimately see more good than bad in Jim? Why or why not? What do you make of the fact that Su loves him anyway?

10. “I have always loved Jim, and I have never loved Jim. In a way, Jim was assigned to me. I never really had a say.” How much do we choose who we love? How much of it do you think is circumstance?

11. After Su finds out Jim has had multiple affairs and spent tens of thousands of dollars on other women, things are rough between them, but she ultimately forgives him. Why do you think she did? Did she have any other choice? Do you think it shows weakness or strength on her part? Would you have forgiven Jim?

12. Toward the end of the book, Su finds out that she had an old boyfriend named Neal, a man her friends and family assure her was her first love. She has no memory of him, but then she remembers that there was a time when she didn’t remember or love her husband or children either. “And yet the expectation, and eventually the reality, was that I loved all of these people.” What does this say about the nature of love? Do you believe love must be immediate, or can it grow over time? Is romantic love different than maternal love? Do we choose love, or does it choose us?

13. “If I didn’t have Jim, I wouldn’t have me.” In light of all Jim has put Su through, and in light of all he did for her, do you agree? Is Su who she is largely because of Jim? Do you think she would have become a different person if she had married Neal? How do the people we surround ourselves with shape who we become?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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