alternate universes, or the "maybe" game

For some reason I started thinking about alternate universes today.  Forgive my lack of scientific words, but there is a theory (not science fiction or fantasy, but a real actual scientific idea) called a Multiverse, that posits that everything that ever could have happened, did happen, just in some other world that lies parallel to ours.  That makes me wonder if that place (those places) are the afterlife we dream of and hope for.  In some of those worlds:

• My dad is still alive and clear-minded and we visit Aunt Bert every Friday because she is also alive and clear-minded at 94 years old.  
• My grandpa didn't die of cancer 25 years ago.
• My grandma didn't have a stroke a year ago.  
• I am thin.  
• I am a paleontologist with a dinosaur named after me and I have held the claw of a raptor and the tooth of a t-rex.
• I have run my fingers through a tiger's fur.  
• I have written best-selling novels and I hobnob with famous writers.  
• I am working with elephants so I can clone a mammoth.  

That is something that can sustain me.  Every once in a while, I get a hint of cross-over, I feel like just there, so close I can touch her, Another Bert has done something amazing, and I get an echo.   Maybe on days that I feel sad for no reason, something bad has happened to one of my Others.  My pet lived, but hers died.  She has lost something that I got to keep.  And I have lost so much, and perhaps they kept it.  (They can all keep the weight I've lost, that's for sure.)
I am reading Terry Pratchett's newest book, Dodger.  To think this came out of the mind of someone who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's 5 years ago is amazing.  I know he has some help writing now, but his voice is still strongly there.  And maybe, for this world, the trade-off was my dad died and Sir Terry got to live.  Maybe in another world, my dad lived and they lost Terry Pratchett. 
We should know all this, shouldn't we? We are living in the future, aren't we?  The original Cyberpunk game was set in 2013 (then moved to 2020 and now it's being reborn in 2077).  1984, 2001, they were all supposed to be amazing futures.   Cell phones are amazing, the internet is incredible, but where are the flying cars? Why don't we live on the moon?  Why don't I have a port in my head to connect my computer?  Why don't we have awesome cyborgs and laser weapons?
Why can't we see into those other universes?  Just to KNOW, not to communicate.  Even if he's dead now of a heart attack, to know that somewhere my father didn't suffer and die as a virtual vegetable.  That my garden is beautiful because my grandpa lived long enough to help me with it.  That maybe everyone I know who is boring and ordinary, like me, is extraordinary somewhere else, even if it's only on one world out of a million.
Maybe there are other worlds where dementia and cancer don't exist or have been cured.  (I imagine they are even more grossly overpopulated than this world, though.)  Where there are no Alzheimer's blogs or awards for them because they aren't needed.
And maybe in all of them, my dad is dead.  I don't know if I'll ever know.  But I like to think that it's possible he's still there, somewhere, even if it's just at the Elsewhere Bar.
(image source)

a note from my dad

I've just started a massive cleaning/purging of my house, which is badly needed.   I'm not to the point where I need to call in a cleaning show, but it's not great either.   I'm trying to be relentless when throwing and donating and selling, but it's hard.  Things of sentimental value that are just clutter...what does one do with them? I know they are not the person and not the memory.  But I also don't want to end up in a house full of clutter and trash either.
I made the hard decision to throw out the roses from my dad's memorial service. I have two vases that the flowers were in, and those are useful (and used).  My friend, who is helping, took a few petals and saved those in a shadow box with a butterfly picture because she thought I should have kept them.
I found a little decorative plate my dad gave me, with a bird on it.  For some reason I turned it over.  And there was a note on the back.  Obviously it's always been there and maybe I read it before, but it surprised me to see my dad's handwriting.  There is nothing overtly affectionate in the note, which says:  "Made by Bavano of Cheshire.  Brumm enameled copper. Originally made about 30 years ago in Cheshire.  Hand signed by the artist."  It's the thought behind it, that not only did he buy me this pretty little bird plate, but he took the time to write down its history.   That's how my dad showed affection, he didn't go around hugging and kissing people or leaving mushy notes.
Do I need this plate?  It is not useful.  It is clutter.  It is a dust catcher.  But it's cute.  And it has a note from my dad on the back.
The plate stays.
And since I had the note, I looked up the company.   I think it's Bovano.  There is nothing like this plate on their website but it seems to be a similar process. 

129 "do I know you?"

I was over my mom's house yesterday dropping some things off for a project we're doing this weekend. She said my dad woke up at (at 4 a.m.) calling her name--"Ann, Ann, Ann." It's rare that he remembers her name.
Later on they were out in the yard and he walked up to her and put out his hand and said, "Hi, I'm Bob Rizza." (Imagine how many times in his life, as a car salesman for over 40 years, 6 days a week, he said and did that, to make it such an ingrained reflex now.) She replied, "Hi, I'm Ann Rizza, I'm your wife." He thought that was hilarious. He had to go and get a piece of paper to write it down.
But an hour or so later, he went up to her again and said, "Do I know you?" (Politely, not meanly.) She said yes, they had know each other for over 40 years. He was amazed at that too, but not enough to write it down.
I have to wonder what really goes on in his head. If a stranger told me he had known me for 20 years (I'm not old enough to have a 40 year friend), I wouldn't blindly believe it. If some guy told me he was my husband, I wouldn't believe that either. But my dad accepts that. "Okay." and moves on. He knows enough that he doesn't remember things to be trusting, I suppose.
But did he ask me who I was when I got there? No, he just stood up, said, "Hi! Good to see you!" and shook my hand (a typical Bob greeting to anyone who is even remotely familiar to him.)
Aside: Today is the 1 year anniversary of my cat Zen's death. :(

124 Where does memory live?

Yesterday I stopped by my parents' house to talk to my mom about (FINALLY) contacting an elder-care lawyer to help her safeguard her money and home when my dad finally has to get put away. I brought ice cream. You would have thought I handed my dad a million dollars when I gave him that hideous purple sundae (black raspberry). He eats like a child, getting ice cream, whipped cream and hot fudge all over his face and not knowing enough to wipe it off. Plus the farts, oh the farts.
I had downloaded a trial game at home that I thought my mom would like, plus she's getting a weird error message on her computer, so we went downstairs for a while to try out the game and see if I could get the error (I couldn't). She told me she'd read about a study where rats with Alzheimer's could retrieve lost memories and make new ones.
I tried to explain about brain atrophy but she didn't want to hear it.
Someone posted a link on Yahoo Answers to an article which I guess is about the same study.
It starts out:
Mental stimulation and drug treatment may help people with brain ailments such as Alzheimer's disease regain seemingly lost memories.
Calling Alzheimer's a "brain ailment" is like calling .... oh, I can't even come up with a good analogy. An ailment is a cold, a stubbed toe, a headache. It's a minor inconvenience. "Having a bad day, dearie, oh yes, I've got a touch of the Alzheimer's you know, but I'll be right as rain tomorrow."
Scientists used two methods to reverse memory loss in mice with a condition like Alzheimer's -- placing them in sort of a rodent Disneyland to stimulate their brains, and also using a type of drug that encourages growth of brain nerve cells.
I thought brain cells couldn't regrow, only connections between neurons?
If apparently lost long-term memories could be retrieved, this suggested the memories had not been actually erased from the brain.
If the brain is atrophied, where are the lost memories being retrieved FROM?
The researchers used genetically engineered elderly mice in which they were able to activate a protein that triggered brain pathology very much like that of people with Alzheimer's, with atrophy and loss of nerve cells.

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I'm going to go off topic now, into metaphysics.
If you believe in some sort of god-spirit-soul-thing outside you, then I guess you can logically believe that something outside you can hold your memories. Like the Akashic Records, a grand place "out there" where every memory from every lifetime of every person is recorded. Since we can't hold all those memories in our little brains/bodies, they are stored elsewhere. (IMO, this is the true nature of God--all of our memories and thoughts and intent all working together.) If this is the case, than brains have very little to do with memory. They hold a form of short-term memory that's only good for this body--memories of this lifetime. The real repository is out there somewhere, accessible to our souls and god and people like Edgar Cayce.
If you believe this, then yes, no matter how damaged a brain is, as long as the soul is still attached to the body (another topic for another day), the memories can be retrieved.
Think of it this way. If you back up your files onto a thumb drive and then your hard drive crashes, you might forget you had the thumb drive and think the files are gone. But if you find the hard drive and plug it in, voila, there are your files. Think of the Akashic Records as a vast thumb-drive for your life, and all lifetimes if you believe in reincarnation and recycling.
Do mice have Akashic thumb drives? I don't know. I'm not a mouse. I would think not, but who am I to say.
If you are mister or missus scientist and you're laughing at all that, and to you memories are chemical pathways in the brain, then if the brain is atrophied and the pathways erased and the neurons dead, then memory and personality are erased forever.
I'll have to enlarge this and put it on my main website as an article.
Comments welcome, as always, especially from my more technical readers.