The Names I Can’t Remember – a poem shared with GreenConnect
By Lyn Heaysman, Princes Court Director
While caring for her husband Andrew, Lyn Heaysman has been exploring poetry as a way of reflecting on memory loss and the changes dementia can bring.
Lyn recently shared The Names I Can’t Remember with GreenConnect, with an invitation for us to share it with others.
The Names I Can’t Remember
It started with the names.
Not important names, I thought,
just people I hadn’t seen for a while.
I knew the face,
I knew the smile,
I knew I loved them—
but their name
had gone missing.
“Hello, darling,” I’d say,
hoping darling would cover
whatever name I’d forgotten.
Then came the grandchildren.
I could remember them as babies,
the first steps,
the scraped knees,
the school concerts,
the Christmas mornings—
I could tell them stories
from when they were small.
But sometimes I’d look at them
and think,
Now which one are you?
And they’d laugh
because they knew
I was their grandfather
and that was enough.
Then I started forgetting
why I’d walked into a room.
I’d stand in the kitchen
with the refrigerator open,
staring inside
as though the answer
might be hiding beside the milk.
Sometimes I found what I was looking for.
Sometimes I found
something else entirely.
Once I lost my house keys.
I searched my pockets,
the drawers,
the table,
the garden.
They were nowhere.
So I thought,
“Well, I’ll climb through the window.”
Then I looked at the window
and remembered
I was no longer twenty.
My knees reminded me.
So did my back.
I decided the keys
were probably worth finding after all.
And sometimes
I forget my wife’s name.
Now that’s dangerous territory.
I look at her
and a name comes into my head—
but it’s the name
of some girl I knew
sixty years ago.
I say it.
She looks at me.
I look at her.
And suddenly
I remember exactly
why I shouldn’t have said it.
She doesn’t forget my mistake
quite as quickly as I forget hers.
But then she smiles.
And I know her.
Not by her name.
By the way she laughs.
By the way she looks at me.
By all the years
we have carried together.
Maybe that’s the strange thing
about getting old.
The mind lets go
of little things first.
Names.
Dates.
Keys.
Why you walked into the room.
What you had for breakfast.
But somehow
the important things stay.
A mother’s voice.
A father’s hands.
A child’s first steps.
A grandchild’s laughter.
The warmth of someone
sitting beside you
when there is nothing left to say.
And sometimes I wake up
with a smile on my face.
Someone asks,
“Why are you smiling?”
And I don’t know.
I’ve forgotten.
But I’m happy anyway.
Perhaps that’s enough.
Perhaps we spend our whole lives
collecting memories,
only to discover at the end
that we don’t need to remember
every moment.
Maybe we only need
to have lived them.
And if tomorrow
I forget your name,
come and sit beside me.
I’ll probably know you.
And if I don’t—
tell me your name again.
I’ll be glad
to meet you
all over again.
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