If Memory Serves

If you’d like a good example of how faulty memory can be. I have an example for you. As I mentioned yesterday, I had failed to realize that my mother and my great-grandmother died in the same year, 1968. I was 21 when my mother passed. My youngest brother was 13. I called him yesterday to talk because I felt bad about not fully appreciating the depth of my father’s loss that year and I needed to share my feelings with him, because he was there.

It turns out he had the sequence of the deaths reversed. He thought our great-grandmother passed before our mother. I assured him it was true. Our mother went in February. Our great-grandmother died in October. Maybe it’s the expected versus the unexpected that plays the trick on your mind. Maybe it’s the grief. It was our mother and she died without warning, giving her mourning preeminence. And maybe we just couldn’t take a second death happening so soon after. At any rate, what happened for both of us is called confabulation, misremembering your own experiences.

It feels good to get it sorted out, although it’s too late to say anything to my father. He passed away in 2006. But it’s a nice reminder that memories are frail beings and often bear little resemblance to the thing they purport to represent. We filter them with our wants and desires, color them with expectations, and prioritize them to fit the story. And the story is important because it’s our past and that informs our future, and it’s a little unnerving to have your memory fail as it did in this case.

John W Wilson

Gatewood Press is a small, family owned press located in the Hill Country of Texas.

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