I attended a meeting on stroke-brain damage this afternoon and the speaker talked about how some of those patients would go through the ordeal of memory loss and literally become men without a past. 

Earlier this year dad passed into eternal rest after a courageous battle with illness. He had survived a massive brain hemorrhage five years ago. 

Confined to bed and gradually losing grip of everyday life, his once superb mental prowess lapsed into the abyss of time. In time his memory had been slowly but unmistakably erased. No longer recognizing any one-not even himself-in his later years, often he would call my sister (who cared for my dad at his bedside) to look for herself. It was utterly agonizing, according to my sister, to watch dad gazing upon the same man in the mirror without a trace sign of recognition.  

Yet, dad remembered my sister’s name, and indeed, all his children’s names, without really knowing them. His memory might be wiped out, but he had never become a man without a past.