Last weekend when we were home for the funeral I was talking to my sister and she said something about memory that made me smile. Because it's something I say all the time. Something I harp on. Something I read up on. Something I know to be true.
Basically your memories are yours and mine are mine and even if we are remembering the same event we don't necessarily have the same memory of it.
Memory is not trustworthy.
We all think it is. "I remember that clearly!"
But it's not.
Our memory is fickle. And each time we remember something we change it just a little. It's a memory of a memory. We can even start to remember things, in remarkable detail, that never happened. Brian Williams was a really public example of this. People hung him out to dry, but he probably honestly believed what he was saying. One of the ways you could tell is by how his story morphed over time. He started out with a pretty accurate (from other accounts, though we know those aren't really all that accurate either) then he added one detail, then another, and eventually the story he remembered and told was different than the one he started with.
And people do it all the time.
I've told the story of almost drowning and the only other person there at the time has a very different story than I do in some key areas. And that was from the start. We both lived it, but we lived it differently and what we remember is different.
I've had people tell me stories about things happening to me, or things that I've supposedly said, that I have no memory of at all. But they will swear is true and happened.
And for years, before I realized how fragile memory was, I relied on my own memory heavily. And there are times I still do feel like I must be remembering something exactly. I mean I can picture the room, I can tell you what people are wearing. I can tell you who said what and when. And I could be right. But then again, I might not at all.
We all remember things differently.
And sometimes we remember things the way we want them to be. Or need them to be.
I have friends who have changed relationships with their parents after they died. Which you would think would be tricky right? Like you had a relationship with them when they were alive and that's what it was, you could have changed it then, but not now. But really? It's easier to change it once they are dead. Because they aren't there fucking up your rewrite anymore. I've seen people who were estranged from their parents suddenly have the tightest mother/daughter bond you have ever heard about. I've seen a lot of rewriting of personalities, and not just with parents but with a lot of people. The world's biggest asshole is now tough but fair.
I think the whole don't speak ill of the dead thing comes in to play here. And if you spend enough years not speaking ill of the dead you forget that they had a lot of ill to talk about.
You all also know I don't buy in to that. If you don't want to be spoken ill of after you die then don't be a dick while you are alive. I'm not polishing your legacy for you. I might not speak of you at all, or might not contradict the polishers, but I won't add to it. They need to do what works for them, and if that means that their memories shift, then okay. As long as it doesn't hurt someone else then okay.
And sometimes you'll hear something about someone you knew that doesn't line up with your own memories and you have to figure out how to deal with those as well. For me? I fall back on that belief, your memories are yours, mine are mine.
And that's okay.
Memory is shifty. It really is. Just don't think your memories are any more reliable than someone elses and you'll be okay.
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