If there is one thing that I am really fearful of[1] it is losing my memories.
Only our memories and the knowledge and judgement which we develop as a result of these episodic experiences and re-use has real value[2].
This fear drives my interest in Alzheimer‘s disease since it lurks on the horizon for so many people.

Looking up at the sky I see the neurons in my head.

Salon have a pretty standard interview with an author on mid-life memory loss and the early onset of Alzheimer’s – Cathryn Jakobson Ramin.
It’s not revolutionary, but here are some bits.

Does anything about our brains improve with age?
Vocabulary. You keep learning new words and you don’t forget them. But that does not mean that you can produce them! As we get older we blank and we block. We can’t retrieve the word in the middle of a conversation.

I remember hearing that older people are better at predicting outcomes?
That’s true. We can make certain valid assumptions based on previous experience, that younger people cannot. You can look at your daughter’s boyfriend and realize in about 20 seconds that this is not going to work. But it will take her about two years.

So what is memory to us?
Memory is everything. Memory is who we are. When it goes, there is nothing left there. It’s what we know about our lives. When it goes — as it does in Alzheimer’s disease — people don’t necessarily lose the ability to get up or eat a meal or go for a walk or sit in a chair. They lose themselves.

[1] Other than severe pain or a violent or slow death – things that the neurons fear.
[2] This, of course, excludes the elaborate material bulk that I move around to ‘improve my quality of life’.