Anniversary means "returning yearly." It is a way of connecting us to what has gone on before on a particular date, a way of remembering our history. We recently celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary-32 times of returning to the essence of who we are, together.

One yearly ritual we have is to exchange anniversary cards we have given each other in previous years. Some go back a decade, with dates and small inscriptions that help us remember how we celebrated the anniversaries past. We do the same with cards from birthdays, Valentine's Day, Easter, and Mother's and Father's day. Those recycled cards become like Rosary beads or Mula prayer beads that link together our individual histories and the history of our relationship.

Mma Ramotswe, the heroine in Alexander McCall Smith's The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, reflects, "Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happen to us and which come back, unexpectedly, to remind us of who we are."

Faded Photographs

But what happens to who we are when our brains no longer process memories? When nearly 94-year-old Rose Alma Piller, Rita's mother died last month, she no longer had memories-- not of her life nor that of her children's. But she was still herself and knew that her daughters and son were her children. How is it that a relationship can endure without its history? How do we stay connected to those we love when the brain can no longer make the connection?

The only way to approach such a question is with an abiding sense of wonder, awe and humility. Whether it is your own aging parent or spouse, surprise is a companion along the way.

One Million Billion

To begin with, "You are more than what you are aware of," neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux is quick to remind us. The brain's "mantle," the cerebral cortex, is folded into a marvelous array of tiny "peaks" (gyri) and "valleys" (sulci). Gerald Edelman, a Nobel Prize winner, tells us that if we unfolded this convoluted matter, making it flat, "it would have the size and thickness of a large table napkin. It would contain at least 30 million neurons, or nerve cells and 1 million billion connections, or synapses. If you started counting these synapses right now at a rate of 1 per second, you would just finish counting them 72 million years from now."

So Rose Alma lost her long-term, episodic "explicit" memory but, surprisingly, much of her "working" very-short term, "implicit" memory remained. With it, she retained her love of music and dance. Every Saturday afternoon, she would watch Lawrence Welk reruns on TV, enjoy her cocktail with extended family and dwell in the Norman Rockwell-heartland-of-America music of a bygone era.

What connects us longest, as the brain ages, are not sparkling conversations but the touch, sounds, facial features and presence of those with whom we have extended histories.

"Feeling Felt"

Much communication at any age is nonverbal. Much comes from the deepest end of the limbic system, the "emotional brain," starting with the amygdala, where implicit memory is embedded.

The ability of two people, in the loving presence of one another, to mutually activate dopamine receptors in that part of the brain is tangible. Neuroscientists talk about this attunement as a resonance not fully understood. But it is there. It is an experience that scientist Daniel Siegel calls "feeling felt" – when the hearts and minds of two individuals connect so that each "feels felt" by the other.

Hearts, as we have noted before, have their own brains and neurons and ways of producing "feeling felt" synchrony between two people.

Many scientists today are careful to distinguish the mind from the brain. The brain ages and deteriorates. The mind may not. An ongoing study of the brains of an order of nuns, School Sisters of Notre Dame, has shown some surprising results: A few of the sisters, whose brains at death showed distinct evidence on autopsy of Alzheimer's, never had symptoms of the brain disease during their long lives. Others, whose brains showed little evidence of the tangled, amyloid plaques found with the disease, demonstrated during their lifetime memory losses and disability distinctive to Alzheimer's.

So what is the mind if it doesn't depend exclusively on the brain? Poet/naturalist Diane Ackerman says a way "to think of mind may be as St. Augustine thought of God, as an emanation that's not located in one place, or one form, but exists throughout the universe. An essence, not just a substance."

As to Rose Alma and her mind and her brain, our guess is that whether we call it implicit memory that is deeper than the ravages of time or an essence that pervades all there is, she was hearing music to the very end.

When composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein went to the bedside of Nadia Boulanger, his old counterpoint teacher, he was told she would not recognize him, but out of that deep part of herself, she did. "Cher Lenny," she whispered. Bernstein knelt beside her in silent communion and asked, "Do you hear music in your head?" She replied instantly, "All the time." Leonard asked, was it one of her loves - Bach, Mozart, Monteverdi, Ravel? There was a long pause. Then Madame Boulanger said: "One music, with no beginning, no end."

UPDATED: 9-27-2004

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