The Theft of Memory

by Jonathan Kozol

  Even then, however, while they were in Venice, my father’s usual congenial manner and quick-witted gift for making friends with strangers had, it seems, brought him the attention of an attractive woman who was seated near him at a dinner party, given in his honor as I gathered, and my mother seems to have decided that he had been too responsive to the woman’s interest.

  “At your age, Harry,” she had written to him after they came home, in one of the many letters they would leave for one another in the kitchen, propped against the coffeepot, “you should be ashamed to pay attention to that kind of woman.” Using an old-fashioned word, my mother had described the woman as “some kind of floozy.” The matter, blessedly, ended there. My father naturally told my mother he was sorry he had hurt her feelings.

  Six months after their return to Boston, my father sat me down for the conversation, the one he tape-recorded, in which he described to me the episodes of “cutoff”—“interrupted consciousness”—he had started to experience, and their probable causation. It was another eighteen months before he had the consultation with his former student that confirmed the diagnosis.

  Two years after that, his primary physician, who had been a friend of his for more than thirty years, wrote to his attorney, “Harry has become incapable of managing his own affairs by reason of advanced age and mental incapacity.” By June of that year, following his accident, he was in the nursing home. The tilting of the balance between my father’s exercise of competence and judgment and authority in helping me get through some of the most uncertain and unstable times in my career and my own responsibility to count upon my competence and judgment to protect him in the years that now remained had come to be essentially complete.

  From that time on, whenever any memories of early disagreements or ancient-seeming tensions between my father and myself drifted back into my mind, I did my best to banish them in their totality. Instead, I gravitated to the best of memories. I’d find myself drawn back consolingly to early mornings on the lake in Maine when the fish were biting or, as we were always able to persuade ourselves when we saw a ripple on the surface of the water, curiously nibbling. I’d also recollect the times he brought me with him when he was rushing off to see a patient in the evening, and I’d open up his doctor’s bag again and hold the tuning fork or wooden throat sticks in my hand. Or I would remember (maybe my favorite memory of all) his putting the stethoscope around my neck and lifting me onto a patient’s bed, letting me pretend I was his “chief assistant.” Pride in my father, thankfulness that he had been my father, and an ultimately grateful feeling of respect (grudging at first, it took a while to come) for the aching if imperfect love he never ceased to feel for Mom—these are the things I wanted to hold on to.

  It will soon be seven years since the night I bent down by his bed to press my ear against his chest and listen to his breathing as his life came to its end. But even now, and even after rounding out the story of his sometimes turbulent complexity, as I’ve felt obliged to do in order to keep faith with the reality of who he was, it is the reaffirming memories that crowd out all the rest.

  The sense that I was on a journey with my father—seventy-two years is a good big piece of anybody’s life—did not end abruptly on the day I buried him. On cold November nights when I’m in a thoughtful mood or worried about problems with my work, or personal missteps I may have made, and go out walking by myself along the country roads around my house, I like to imagine that he’s there beside me still, tapping that old cane of his, making his amusing comments on the unpredictable events and unexpected twists and turns in other people’s lives.

  Perhaps, over the next few years, that sense of his continuing companionship will fade. It probably will. But some part of the legacy my father and good mother gave me will, I know, remain with me even when their voices and their words and the expressions on their faces and the vivid details of their life’s adventure become attenuated in the course of time. Some of the blessings that our parents give us, I need to believe, outlive the death of memory.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A great many kind and patient people have helped me in the writing of this book and given me encouragement to bring it to completion. I thank especially Caroline Jalfin, Cassie Schwerner, Amy Ehntholt, Melanie Harris, Julia Barnard, Jacey Rubinstein, Daniel O’Leary, Dr. Lisa Rosenbaum, Jane Dimyan-Ehrenfeld, Ariella Suchow, and my editors Domenica Alioto and Doug Pepper. Thanks, too, to Dr. Edward Rabe, Dr. Jim Roseto, Dr. Emily Coskun, Dr. Michael Johnson, and Dr. Lawrence Hartmann, who reviewed portions of this book and helped me to correct or clarify references to medical and neuropsychiatric probems and procedures.

  My deepest debt is to my close friends and assistants Vanessa Krasinski and Lily Jones. Lily did the lion’s share of the research on this book, helped me to sort out hundreds of my father’s papers, and tried to check my father’s memories against whatever published documents were available. Vanessa worked painstakingly on almost every aspect of the book in its final stages. I thank them both for their persistence.

  I’m grateful also to Aurélia Thiérrée, a great-granddaughter of Eugene O’Neill and a gifted stage-performer, who read this book as I was working on the first twelve chapters, told me of her meetings with my parents and later, when we spent some time together, helped me to confirm my mother’s recollections of her family.

  Some of the people who brought the greatest comfort to my parents in their later years—Julia Walker, Silvia Garcia, Angela and Alejandro Gomez, and the nurse I call Lucinda—have been described at length. But there were others, of whom I haven’t spoken or have done so only passingly.

  One of them was Linda Hiller, the daughter of my father’s younger brother, whose emotional support and kindness to my father never wavered in his final years. Another was Michael Meyer, a teaching assistant at the University of Massachusetts, who became immersed in my father’s writings, sometimes helped him to do research, and frequently stayed overnight at the apartment to calm the tensions that arose between him and my mother. Yet another was the loyal student from Nepal who drove in from Amherst to keep my father company while he was in the nursing home and, like Alejandro, had a special gift for making intellectual connections with my father. He soon became a part of that inner circle of good friends and helpers who brought a sense of continuity and warm familiarity into my father’s life. I wish I’d had a chance to speak of all these people in more detail.

  I’ve also spoken only briefly of my sister. This is largely the result of geographic distance. She didn’t live here—as I’ve noted, she had moved to the Midwest more than forty years before—and therefore didn’t have the opportunity to be present in the day-to-day events and observe the slowly changing rhythms in our parents’ lives or take an active role in the decision-making that was needed, almost always at short notice. But another reason is the very narrow scope and focus of this book. One of the imperfections in the way I’ve told this story is a kind of tunnel vision, or partially closed lens, that arrows in upon those aspects of my father’s life and mine that we shared with one another, to the relative exclusion of other aspects of his life, no matter how important, that remain on the periphery.

  I’ve described the feeling that I often had of traveling at my father’s side as if I were alone with him for extended periods of time—a feeling that intensified when he sat me down and described to me, in confidence, the early indications of his sickness and later as we struggled to make sense out of his puzzlements and uncompleted sentences and increasingly fragmented memories.

  In reality, we were not alone. Until a year before her death, my mother was there, close at hand, strong of will, and for the most part clear of mind. My sister came to Boston at least twice a year, and often more, to spend time at the nursing home and visit the apartment. Her children, both of whom had settled in New England, came to Boston frequently. Her older daughter, Jody, who lived in Massachusetts and had a deep attachment to my father, came to visit almost on a monthly basis for a
period of years. She also tried her best to get into Boston, to the MGH, in order to see Daddy on the night he died; but the morphine drip outpaced her. I was thankful for everything my sister and her daughters did to overcome the obstacles of distance.

  Finally, I need to speak again of my gratitude to Julia Walker, not only for the love she gave my parents but also for the help she’s given me in filling out pieces of the story that she remembers much more clearly than I do and for going through some of these pages with me to correct my errors. She was a blessing in my parents’ lives, and now in mine. Thank you, Julia, for long years of friendship.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1

  TEACHING ASSISTANT WHO HELPED MY FATHER WITH HIS WRITING: Michael Meyer, a poet and religious scholar, had known my father for a number of years, so there was a bond of trust that he could build on in the early stages of my father’s illness.

  MY FATHER’S SELF-DIAGNOSIS AND RELUCTANCE TO SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH MY MOTHER: Naturally, he did discuss this with my mother in due time. I took it as a matter of trust not to pressure him.

  CHAPTER 2

  “RELIGION AND INSANITY”: My father’s senior honors thesis was written in 1927 under the direction of Dr. Morton Prince, a noted specialist in abnormal psychology who taught at Harvard College from 1926 to 1928.

  EUGENE O’NEILL’S TREMOR MISDIAGNOSED AS PARKINSON’S DISEASE: My father believed the tremor was primarily the consequence of a form of neurological degeneration which, on the basis of O’Neill’s family history, appeared to be hereditary. According to the autopsy and neuropathological assessment of O’Neill carried out, at Carlotta’s request, on November 28, 1953, there was no evidence of Parkinson’s disease. “From time to time,” the neuropathologist noted, “various drugs regularly used for the control of Parkinsonism had been tried, but these invariably made him worse.”

  DEATH OF EUGENE O’NEILL: According to a memo that my father wrote on November 30, 1953, “Eugene died on Friday, November 27 at 4:39 p.m. He died in his own bed in his apartment at the Hotel Shelton….I had predicted in the morning that he would go with the sunset and so he did.” The cause of his death, my father wrote, was bronchial pneumonia. O’Neill’s burial was on December 1, 1953, at Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston.

  ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD: My father said he took Professor Whitehead’s philosophy course in 1924. He also said he sometimes visited Whitehead at his home along with other students on a Sunday afternoon. I have no way to confirm this.

  CHAPTER 3

  MY FATHER STILL READING MEDICAL JOURNALS: In late June 1999, I noticed that my father had underlined the title and the first few lines of an article on Alzheimer’s disease that he had found in The British Journal of Neurology. He had been in the nursing home nearly three years at the time.

  “REPAIR REPETITIONS”: My father’s memo is condensed to bypass words that I could not decipher or where their meaning was obscure. I’ve followed the same practice elsewhere in the book in cases where I couldn’t read some portions of his writing or where he meandered into pleasant but irrelevant digressions.

  CHAPTER 4

  “ONEIRIC STATE,” “EMERGENT PROPERTIES,” SPONTANEOUS ELECTRICAL EVENTS: The physician who explained this to me also used the term “spontaneous firing of the circuits” in reference to the activation of a memory or a small piece of a memory. For a more extensive explanation of what may appear to us to be emerging memories, see Daniel Schacter, cited in note for Chapter 12.

  CHAPTER 5

  APPARENT DERELICTION OF MEDICAL DIRECTOR AT NURSING HOME: There was more than one medical director during the years my father stayed there. My reference here is to the physician who filled this role at the time my father underwent this crisis.

  MY FATHER’S USE OF AN ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAM TO IDENTIFY LOCATION OF A CYST ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF A WOMAN’S BRAIN: The E.E.G. (which is no longer used for this diagnostic purpose) did not show the image of a cyst or tumor. What it showed were fluctuating brain waves, indicating variations in electrical activity in different sections of the brain. By examination of the E.E.G. a doctor could surmise the probable location and approximate dimensions of a cyst or other lesion.

  DR. MERRILL MOORE’S BRILLIANCE, ECCENTRICITY, AND ASSOCIATIONS IN THE WORLD OF THEATER: Among his most successful cases was that of Joshua Logan, a prominent theatrical director in New York, whom Dr. Moore treated for severe depression. In his memoirs, Logan wrote that, when he had a consultation, “Merrill would lope in and autograph one of his books…to me….I avoided reading them, but I couldn’t avoid his reciting them to me, which he did constantly while walking down halls or going up in elevators. He told me he composed his sonnets while crossing streets or climbing stairs or while he was starting his car.” See Joshua Logan, Josh (New York: Delacorte Press, 1976).

  MY FATHER’S EXAMINATION OF CARLOTTA AND MEETING WITH O’NEILL: According to my father’s notes and a dictation tape he made, he was called into the case by the clinical director of McLean, who believed there was a “concerted plan” to terminate Carlotta’s marriage, “and immobilize her, so to speak [my father’s words] under the guise of involuntary hospitalization.” The director also told him that Carlotta had been brought to McLean from Salem Hospital, close to the town of Marblehead, where the couple had been living. She had been admitted to the hospital in February 1951, because of confusion attributed to bromide poisoning, which was at first mistaken for hysteria. O’Neill, my father said, was also at the hospital during this period, because he had a broken leg from having fallen outside of his home in Marblehead after a stormy quarrel with Carlotta. While O’Neill was still in Salem Hospital, Dr. Moore induced him to sign the petition alleging that Carlotta was insane. My father’s first meeting with O’Neill was, he said, in early May “at the Doctors’ Hospital in New York,” where O’Neill was being treated for pneumonia.

  CHAPTER 6

  MY FATHER INJURING HIMSELF AT NURSING HOME: “At 6:20 a.m. Harry fell. He was found lying on floor next to his bed,” according to a nurse’s note. “He sustained an abrasion above his left eyebrow.”

  MY MOTHER AND THE RED SOX: In 1918, the previous time the Red Sox won the World Series, my mother was fourteen. When they won again in 2004, my mother kept on telling Julia, “Yes! They won! I saw it!” She asked Julia to put up pictures of her favorite players on the bedroom wall.

  GIRLS’ LATIN SCHOOL: Technically, according to official records, the school was never closed but was transformed in 1971 into a new and very different coeducational institution and given a new name.

  CHAPTER 7

  EUGENE O’NEILL’S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT: The copy I found in my father’s desk was dated June 28, 1948. According to a letter from my father to Robert Meserve, a Boston attorney retained by Carlotta, the 1948 will was superseded by a new will, dated March 5, 1951, which O’Neill signed at Merrill Moore’s urging while Carlotta was in McLean and which was subsequently revoked and replaced by a third and, I believe, final will later the same year.

  BLEMIE’S WILL: The Last Will and Testament of Silverdene Emblem O’Neill, which I first read in a typed version, was dated “Tao House, December 17, 1940.” Six years after O’Neill’s death, Carlotta sent my father a privately printed copy of the will, which she inscribed to me “from O’Neill and Blemie and Carlotta.”

  QUOTATIONS BY MY FATHER FROM EUGENE O’NEILL, ALTERCATIONS BETWEEN O’NEILL AND CARLOTTA, O’NEILL’S EXPRESSIONS OF REMORSE IN REFERENCE TO HIS DAUGHTER: The primary sources, here and elsewhere in this book, are my father’s handwritten notes and typed transcripts of more extensive notes he made while he was talking with O’Neill or shortly afterward, as well as his later observations, reflections, and summations, which he would dictate periodically. His initial and subsequent conversations with Oona at her home in Switzerland are documented in his notes and in their correspondence.

  PATRICIA NEAL AUDITIONED FOR ONE OF O’NEILL’S PLAYS: The play was A Moon for the Misbegotten, which toured several cities in 194
7 but was not produced on Broadway in the playwright’s lifetime. Ms. Neal spoke about her meetings with O’Neill and their friendship with each other in her autobiographical book As I Am (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988).

  PATRICIA NEAL’S CAREER AND CEREBRAL IMPAIRMENT: The actress, who received an Academy Award for her role in Hud in 1964, suffered a brain hemorrhage in 1965 but successfully resumed her career in 1968, according to her obituary in The New York Times, August 9, 2010.

  CARLOTTA VETOED MY FATHER’S SUGGESTION THAT HE AND O’NEILL MIGHT GO TO SEE A GAME AT FENWAY PARK: According to my father’s notes, she followed up on this by telling the staff at the hotel that O’Neill “was not to leave the building without her express instructions.”

  THE BETTER PART OF TWO AND A HALF YEARS: My father’s treatment of O’Neill began in mid-May 1951 and continued until the playwright’s death on November 27, 1953.

  CHAPTER 8

  DIFFICULTIES SILVIA AND JULIA FACED IN TRYING TO MAKE CONTACT WITH MY FATHER’S DOCTOR: “We never know,” Julia said, “if the answers that we finally get from someone in the office are based on the information we provided. I mean, we don’t know if the doctor herself ever got that information. Sometimes they tell us, ‘The doctor hasn’t had a chance to look at the lab results yet,’ or some other answer we were waiting for, ‘but we’ll be in touch tomorrow.’ Then, the next day, they might say, ‘He does have an infection, so we called in a prescription. You can go and pick it up.’ But we still don’t know if the doctor is aware of this. We have to push too hard….”