Seeing Someone Slipping into Senility

Peter Abrahams was murdered in Jamaica.  He was a famous writer.  Born in South Africa, migrating first to England, then to Jamaica.   He was a well known journalist and commentator for many years.  He was on television, his voice on radio.

But I did not learn of Peter Abrahams in Jamaica.   I learned of him  in 1973, when I saw a young man, holding book, tears rolling down his face.

That young man was reading a book called Mine Boy, by Peter Abrahams.

I had to read that book, and much of it was so powerful I don’t think of it.  But I recall parts of it, and especially that image of that man, so struck by the book, he was crying.

When I heard Peter Abrahams died, (for it wasn’t realised he was murdered at first) I contacted that man, over forty years since that day.

I contacted him by email.

He didn’t know who Peter Abrahams was.   I reminded him.   But despite this being an email conversation I could see, as clearly as if he stood in front of me, that he did not remember.

I can understand one forgetting some program on television in 1973 that they watched with half an eye.  Or some tune that was playing in the background of a genre one didn’t enjoy.

I can not understand how he could forget this writer.

It gets worse

When Peter Abrahams death was ruled to be a murder and a suspect taken into custody, I contacted this man again.  I assumed that between the death and this arrest, over a month, that he would have remembered, or at least done a search to remind himself.

I wrote to him telling him of the murder and the arrest.

He said he didn’t recognise the name Peter Abrahams.

I knew then that he had passed into the realm of senility.

One might forget a book they read forty years ago.  But forget an email sent a month ago?  To write; “I do not recognise the name,”?

I realise that this person I’ve known is slowly drifting away.