人晚年生活的主旋律是告别。

我们告别亲人，告别朋友，告别师长，告别故乡，告别以往的生活习惯和思维模式，甚至告别自己的母语 ……, 然而现在到来的这个告别却是特别地沉重。

它来得如此缓慢，貌似人道地不想对你的生活产生太突然的冲击，因而人们并不把它列入疾病之列。先是短期记忆的离别，然后中期记忆逐渐蜕变成为短期记忆，最后中期记忆离去，剩下了那些为数不多的被脑蛋白反复巩固过的长期记忆。

开始的时候是一种失去效率的感觉。人会时隐时现地觉得技能学习和工作效率不如从前，这常常使人误认为是功夫不深或投入的时间不够。

然后影响到人的精神活动，主要是思考的习惯，思考的质量，和思考的乐趣。年轻时有什么新鲜想法，立即会衍生出很多更深更有趣的思考，你可以在较长时间里去追寻和享受这些思考。到了现在，你不得不用录音笔记录下时常出现在脑中的闪光，才有可能事后慢慢咀嚼。

当短期记忆的丧失发展到影响个人的日常生活时，人才会开始真正感到它的存在并引起对它的关注。最先遗忘的是钥匙放在哪里、刚刚想要说点啥、昨天吃了什么，亦或是才认识的新邻居的名字。起初只是笑一笑，觉得不过是粗心或走神。但当这“粗心”变得频繁，甚至影响到重要的生活细节，譬如外出忘了锁门，煮饭忘了关火，心中那道模糊的阴影便开始浮现——是不是，我的记忆要离我去了？

这不是一次使心灵震撼的别离，没有痛，没有泪，没有久久的凝视，没有徒劳的挽留，只有静静的，缓慢的流失。它不像丧亲那般悲恸欲绝，不像失恋那样心飞魂游。你睁着眼，看着记忆的树叶一片片飘落无踪，再也无法将它们重新拼凑回来。

人不过就是由躯壳和精神组成的一部生物机器。精神活动最主要内容之一就是记忆。没有记忆的精神，就像失去了内存的计算机，不管CPU如何强大和灵敏，对人这部机器都毫无意义。记忆存储着我们曾经走过的路、说过的话、爱过的人、受过的伤、流过的泪，它是我们所有逻辑推理的基础，是我们全部喜怒哀乐的源泉。失去记忆，就像一座房子被悄悄拆除了梁柱，外观未变，但已摇摇欲坠。你还活着，却失去了灵魂的支撑。

曾经听母亲说起她的童年，听父亲讲过他的坷坎。我曾以为，这些故事自会被生物的接力棒传递下去。可如今，审视着我这根接力棒时，却突然发现，我并不具备那样的功能，或者说生物并不具备那样的功能，而且人不应该希冀那样的功能，除非你在记忆强大的日子努力做些什么。有时，我还会在梦中回到童年，梦见外婆和老屋、院中的丝瓜架、少年时的朋友们。梦中一切鲜明清晰，而梦醒之后，那些场景就像退潮的浪，带走了沙滩上的脚印。

告别记忆，其实也是一种全方位的剥离。它剥去我们虚荣，也剥去我们的谦卑，它剥去我们假意，也剥去我们诚心，让我们赤裸地，简单地面对人生最后的旅程。你的世界缩小了，从一个有纵深、有层次、有温度的立体空间，变成了一个现在进行时的静态画面。

人告别记忆的层次并不相同，就像世界上有穷人富人一样，取决于你从上帝的签盒中抽到一张什么样的签牌。《儒林外史》中的严监生，临死前还记得油灯中点着两根灯草，挣扎着要儿孙挑掉一根以蓄家财，他的短期记忆可了得！是不是该羡慕呢？

然而，这场告别并非全然残酷。

当记忆开始褪色，往昔的伤痛也会随之远去。那些曾让人夜不能寐的遗憾与悔恨，会在记忆的退潮中被冲刷得轻盈。你不再固执地抓着过往，不再执着于谁对谁错，不再念念不忘某个眼神、某句重话。你学会宽容，学会忘记，也学会说声再见。

老年人的心，或许就是这样慢慢变得柔软随和起来的。他们忘了许多事，但感到了爱。他们不再记得自己的年纪和姓名，却记得世上最纯真的爱来自何处。我忘不了敬重的长辈临终时常说的一句话是：“我见到了我妈妈！”老人的记忆仿佛是夜空中的星星，零零散散，却总有一两颗，在最需要的时候闪烁出光亮。

因而我会想：如果注定要告别记忆，那是否该更珍惜它还在的时候，与那个半依半就的记忆共舞？是不是应该多记点，多写点、对还在乎你的人多说点，以至于变成一个被照顾、被回忆的对象时，心里更安然。学会放慢脚步，把那些微小却真实的瞬间留在心里——一次黄昏的散步、一场无声的拥抱、一句温暖的问候、一丁点微不足道的感悟。这些小小的脑蛋白的涟漪，说不定在将来的某一天，会是我记忆中最闪烁的星火。

也许，当我们真正与记忆离别的那一刻，我们已然不再恐惧，不再惊惶。正如秋天的树，不再执着于满枝繁叶，安心地等待冬雪覆盖，静静迎接生命下一次的轮回。

告别记忆，是人生中最后一次告别，一个漫长的过程，我们告别世界的前奏曲。

（2025年4月）

English Version ---------------------------

Farewell to memory

The main theme of people's later life is farewell.

We bid farewell to our relatives, friends, teachers, hometown, previous living habits and thinking patterns, and even our mother tongue ... However, the farewell that comes now is particularly heavy.

It comes so slowly that it seems humanely does not want to have too sudden an impact on your life, so people do not classify it as a disease. First, short-term memory leaves, then medium-term memory gradually transforms into short-term memory, and finally medium-term memory leaves, leaving only the few long-term memories that have been repeatedly consolidated by brain proteins.

At first, it is a feeling of loss of efficiency. People will occasionally feel that their skill learning and work efficiency are not as good as before, which often makes people mistakenly believe that they are not working hard enough or not investing enough time.

Then it affects people's mental activities, mainly the habit of thinking, the quality of thinking, and the joy of thinking. When you are young, any new ideas will immediately lead to a lot of deeper and more interesting thoughts, which you can pursue and enjoy for a long time. Now, you have to use a recorder to record the flashes that often appear in your mind, so that you can chew them slowly afterwards.

When the loss of short-term memory develops to the point where it affects a person's daily life, people will begin to really feel its existence and pay attention to it. The first thing to forget is where you put your keys, what you wanted to say just now, what you ate yesterday, or the name of a new neighbor you just met. At first, you just laugh it off, thinking it's just carelessness or distraction. But when this " carelessness " becomes frequent and even affects important details of life, such as forgetting to lock the door when going out, forgetting to turn off the fire when cooking, the vague shadow in your heart begins to emerge - is my memory leaving me ?

This is not a parting that shakes the soul. There is no pain, no tears, no long gaze, no futile retention, only a quiet, slow loss. It is not as sad as losing a loved one, nor as heart-wrenching as losing a lover. You open your eyes and watch the leaves of memory fall away one by one, and you can never put them together again.

A person is nothing more than a biological machine composed of a body and a spirit. One of the most important contents of spiritual activities is memory. A spirit without memory is like a computer without storage unit. No matter how powerful and sensitive the CPU is, it is meaningless to the human machine. Memory stores the roads we have walked, the words we have said, the people we have loved, the injuries we have suffered, and the tears we have shed. It is the basis of all our logical reasoning and the source of all our joys, sorrows, anger and happiness. Losing memory is like a house whose beams and pillars have been quietly removed. The appearance remains unchanged, but it is already shaky. You are still alive, but you have lost the support of your soul.

I once heard my mother talk about her childhood, and my father talk about his hardships. I thought that these stories would be passed on by the baton of living things. But now, when I examine my baton, I suddenly find that I do not have such a function, or rather, living things do not have such a function, and people should not hope for such a function unless you work hard to do something in the days when your memory is strong. Sometimes, I will return to my childhood in my dreams, dreaming of my grandmother and the old house, the loofah rack in the yard, and my friends in my youth. Everything in the dream is vivid and clear, and after waking up, those scenes are like the receding tide, taking away the footprints on the beach.

Saying goodbye to memory is actually a kind of all-round stripping. It strips away our vanity and our humility, our pretense and our sincerity, leaving us naked and simple to face the last journey of life. Your world shrinks, from a three-dimensional space with depth, layers and warmth to a static picture in the present tense.

People's farewell memories are not the same, just like there are rich and poor people in the world. It depends on what kind of lot you draw from God's lot box. Yan Jingsheng in "The Scholars" remembered that there were two wicks in the oil lamp before he died, and he struggled to ask his children and grandchildren to pick one off to save the family wealth. His short-term memory is amazing! Shouldn't we envy him?

However, this farewell was not entirely cruel.

When memories begin to fade, the pain of the past will also fade away. The regrets and remorse that once kept people awake at night will be washed away lightly in the ebb tide of memory. You no longer stubbornly hold on to the past, no longer cling to who is right or wrong, no longer linger on a certain look or a certain harsh word. You learn to be tolerant, learn to forget, and learn to say goodbye calmly.

Perhaps this is how the hearts of the elderly slowly become soft and easy-going. They forget many things, but feel love. They no longer remember their age and name, but remember where the purest love in the world comes from. I can't forget the words that the respected elders often said when they were dying: "I saw my mother!" The memories of the elderly are like stars in the night sky, scattered here and there, but there are always one or two that shine when they are most needed.

So I wonder: If we are destined to say goodbye to memory, should we cherish it more while it is still there, and dance with that half-relying memory? Should we pay more attention to small things, write done more, and say more to those who still care about us, so that when we become an object of care and memory, we will feel more at ease. Learn to slow down and keep those small but real moments in our hearts - a walk at dusk, a silent hug, a warm greeting, a little insignificant feeling. These small ripples of brain protein may become the brightest sparks in my memory one day in the future.

Perhaps, when we really say goodbye to our memories, we are no longer afraid or panicked, just like the trees in autumn, no longer obsessed with full leaves, waiting for the winter snow to cover them, and quietly welcoming the next reincarnation of life.

Saying goodbye to memories is the last farewell in life, a long process and the prelude to our farewell to the world.

(April 2025)