[MUSIC PLAYING]
CLIVE WEARING: I'm completely confused.
DEBORAH WEARING: Confused?
CLIVE WEARING: Yes. I've never eaten anything, never tasted anything, never touched anything, never smelled anything. What right have you to assume you're alive?
DEBORAH WEARING: Mm. But you are.
CLIVE WEARING: Apparently, yes. But I'd like to know what the hell's been going on.
NARRATOR: A cruel twist in Clive Wearing's life story shows us just how fundamental memory is to being human.
DEBORAH WEARING: It all started with a headache. Clive came home one day, and said he had a very bad headache. By the fourth day, he developed quite a high fever. And on the evening of the fourth day, for a little while, he forgot his daughter's name. By the fifth day, he was very delirious.
NARRATOR: In March 1985, a virus invaded Clive Wearing's nervous system. The resulting infection ravaged his memory, resulting in severe retrograde and anterograde amnesia.
DEBORAH WEARING: Clive's world now consists of a moment with no past to anchor it and no future to look ahead to. It is a blinkered moment. He sees what is right in front of him. But as soon as that information hits the brain, it fades. Nothing makes an impression, nothing registers.
CLIVE WEARING: No, that's mean.
NARRATOR: This whirlwind of unstable sensations often left Clive confused and angry.
DEBORAH WEARING: Did I mention--
CLIVE WEARING: Just use your intelligence. And let's have a conversation of intelligence.
DEBORAH WEARING: But you've put-- who would put that?
CLIVE WEARING: I don't know. But no--
DEBORAH WEARING: I--
CLIVE WEARING: No, no. Oh, for Heaven's sake, use your intelligence, for Heaven's sake. I haven't read this in bed, the bloody thing.
DEBORAH WEARING: I'm sorry, darling.
CLIVE WEARING: Well, use your intelligence.
DEBORAH WEARING: Clive gets extraordinarily angry, and who wouldn't? Because here you're not dealing with somebody who is demented, who is oblivious, who is gaga. You're dealing with a perfectly lucid, highly intelligent man, who has been robbed of knowledge of his own life.
NARRATOR: Prior to the illness, Clive Wearing enjoyed an esteemed career as a conductor and expert musician.
DEBORAH WEARING: Clive was a musician of enormous integrity. And he worked a great deal in contemporary music. He was chorus master of the London Sinfonietta, which is Europe's foremost group.
NARRATOR: Clive has retained the ability to play music because many physical activities, such as playing an instrument, rely on procedural memory.
[PIANO MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: What gives Clive's life some degree of continuity is his love for his wife, Deborah.
DEBORAH WEARING: The strongest thing in his life, I believe-- his diaries bear that out-- is his love for me. And that's absolutely raw. And each time I walk into that room, it is as if it's the first time he's seen me for years.
CLIVE WEARING: Good heavens, love. [LAUGHING] Oh, darling I didn't know you were here. [LAUGHING]
NARRATOR: In 1992, Clive moved to a facility dedicated to helping patients recover from brain injuries.
DEBORAH WEARING: One of the things that characterizes Clive's day is that he continually makes entries in his diary. It is an inner compulsion to record the momentous event of waking up. He will record the time, 10:50 AM, awake first time.
And then he looks at the previous entry, which was 10:48 AM, awake first time, and he says no. I wasn't awake then. That wasn't me.
So who's birthday is it next month?
CLIVE WEARING: Mine.
DEBORAH WEARING: Yep.
CLIVE WEARING: And my brother.
DEBORAH WEARING: You have and idea how old you'll be?
CLIVE WEARING: 93,000.
[LAUGHING]
DEBORAH WEARING: No.
CLIVE WEARING: No?
DEBORAH WEARING: How do you think, really?
CLIVE WEARING: 21.
DEBORAH WEARING: No. How old do you really feel? How old do you feel?
CLIVE WEARING: 22.
DEBORAH WEARING: So you feel 22. And how old do you think you are?
CLIVE WEARING: 67.
DEBORAH WEARING: Nope.
CLIVE WEARING: No?
DEBORAH WEARING: You really think-- do you really think you're 67?
CLIVE WEARING: I don't, no idea what it is. No clue. It could be 90 or 100, all I'd know about it.
DEBORAH WEARING: Mm.
[PIANO MUSIC PLAYING]
CLIVE WEARING: It's been like death. I've never seen a human being before. Never had a dream or a thought. The brain has been totally inactive, day and night, the same. Oh, look who's come! Oh!
NARRATOR: Clive still suffers from profound amnesia. But his love for Deborah remains undimmed, and in 2002 the couple renewed their marriage vows.
DEBORAH WEARING: That was a very musical kiss. I'm dizzy. I don't know which part of the room I'm standing in.
[LAUGHING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]