Chilly Powder Memory

Chilly Powder Memory is a fictional story, based on real characteristics of people I know. My friends and family will quickly identify the characters, even when the story is fictional.

Story Summary

My grandmother is in a retirement home, suffering from Alzheimer's syndrome. She recently had medical complications that brought many family members to the hospital, and with the added attention, we saw improvement in her mental state, making us feel guilty for not making an effort to visit her more often.

My brother and I enjoy grilling a steak with a spice-blend I concocted, that makes eating a steak an adventure. It has a generous amount of chilly powder in that puts your mouth on fire, but is quickly extinguished by the brown sugar part of the spice-blend and a salty barbeque spice that rounds the whole experience off. The rock-and-roll-type sensation wakes up the taste buds in your mouth and helps you enjoy good quality steak.

We visit grandma, together with my wife and treat her to a "braai" at a fictional nearby park. She's a difficult and tempered old lady, a trait off-putting to people who didn't know her, but to us, a sign of consideration and nothing but love. She retained this trait if it didn't worsen during her condition.

My brother and I want to see if our special steak will suspend her out of her condition for a while. It does.

Backstory

The sensations as explained above, are real. Our grandma did show improvement in the hospital during the period our family visited her. My brother is a scientist in real life, testing cancer strains or something, but his medical knowledge is nearly equivalent of a doctor, if not better. We're both foodies, that makes us enjoy the finer delicacies in life.

I later found a better chilly powder substitute, but for the purpose of the story, a chilly powder works quite fine. Friends of mine grow their chilies and resemble chilly-connoisseurs in their chilly fan club. It's always better if you know where your ingredients come from, especially your spices that add flavour to your food.

Initially, my wife and grandma had a rocky relationship, but once you know grandma and where she comes from, you appreciate her blunt remarks that others classify as sensitive subjects.

Relevance to this book

Besides the obvious story of the alternating taste sensations that relieved grandma's memory blockage, everyone can connect a certain taste to a memory. Even a smell is sometimes enough to trigger a memory.

We sometimes make connections in our minds about unrelated signals from the outside world, but imagine we if we associated certain smells with love or hate. We do. I personally associate a certain cologne my grandfather used to a loving elderly man. I can only imagine what association another kid would have made if he was a victim of bullying, and the bully wore the same cologne. If we stood beside each other, fifty-years down the line in a situation where we had to, say for instance judge a singing competition. If the singer approached us, wearing the same cologne, we would lean our points towards different ends of the spectrum based on the emotions we associate with his smell.

How many other associations do we make with smells, tastes, sounds and textures during our lifetimes? When a new situation resembles a past experience, we prejudge others without meeting them.

Alzheimer's disease seem to merely block our memories from us, not take them away, so we are wrong to treat those patients who suffer from the disease as if they're sitting in death's waiting room. Some day, Alzheimer's could be cured by whatever causes the memory blockage. For now, we can prevent it from happening by being active and never to stop learning. Trick your brain into thinking that you're young and growing, even if only in wisdom.

If you like to read the story, you are welcome to buy the book from our store page. It is available in eBook format at Smashwords, Amazon Kindle, as well as in a Print on demand paperback format at Amazon Paperback. In South Africa, I recommend buying from Takealot.