Memento Mori

     Upon reading Memento Mori by Nathan Nolan, I immediately thought of one thing. Grey's Anatomy. I don't know how many people have seen the show and all of its 17 seasons, but there is a scene extremely similar to the short story.

    In the season 5 finale, (spoilers) a character in the show Izzie undergoes brain surgery which leads to her having short-term memory loss or some other medical term that made her forget everything in the last 5 or 10 minutes. To try and help, the other characters had note cards with sentences explaining to her what had happened placed around her hospital room. All short phrases, to allow her to become less bothersome. Instead of asking the same questions every so often, all she had to do was read the note cards and would be caught up to speed, of course until her memory reset again.

    Extremely similar to Memento Mori, except after a bit of time, Izzie's condition went away. After first watching that scene, I thought about how frustrating that would be. Every 5 minutes my brain resetting, being such a bother to those around me. Lucky for Izzie it didn't last very long. However, in the man's case, it seems to be permanent. I now have come to think about what it would be like in his shoes. 

    As the narrator wrote, it is impossible for him to have a normal life. No job, no significant other, no kids, nothing. He even went so far as to describe him as a dead man and a vegetable. Now it sounds harsh, but I have to agree. In my opinion, having your brain reset every so often, and having to rely on an abundance of lists to do simple tasks does not provide a true value of life. Izzie was lucky enough to shake out of the memory loss, but for the rest of your life having your memory reset sounds to me like a death sentence. I could not come close to imagining the frustration of that condition, and wonder what the man would do if one day he woke up and no longer had the memory loss. Would he seek the revenge the narrator was describing? Would he restart his life? Or would he not be able to move past how much he has already lost.