A Personal Reflection on Memory

I would like to interrupt my regularly scheduled programming to share some personal thoughts on a topic unrelated to books. If you have any book recommendations on memory, please share in the comments. I would love to read them!

My grandma passed away from Alzheimer’s in 2007 when I was a young adult. She was one of my favorite people in the world, responsible for so many of my warm, happy, visceral early memories. It may be because of her that I think about memory so often. How to retain memories, how to keep them in the right order. Before I was married, I used relationships as time markers when I wanted to recall something, lumping things together chronologically, e.g. “That was while I was with so-and-so, so I was in college at the time,” or “That was the summer after I dated so-and-so which was when I was having those dizzy spells.” Early into my marriage, I started using trips to mark the passage of time since we traveled semi-regularly. But we are entering our sixth year as a married couple in a few months and this strategy is already slipping (“What year did we visit the Alexes in Massachusetts?” “What did we even do in Burlington?”) because I don’t have anything to “lump” with these experiences. The difference between the first strategy and the second is that in the first, both elements changed, and these changes were all about challenge, growth, and newness. The second strategy is just an attempt to remember.

Dates are an important part of keeping a timeline, and I struggle the most with this. When looking for a photo from 2007—before I had a smartphone, possibly before I had a digital camera (did I get it in 2007 or 2008?)—I tried to fill in the gap between the childhood photos my mom took and the pic-happy years from 2008 on. I found myself arguing with time stamps (“That CAN’T be right!”) and looking back at dates on my old college papers (yes, I have those saved digitally too) to try to match things up like I’m some detective working on a kidnapping investigation. In a way, that’s what I am. A detective investigating the slow kidnapping of my memory.

As I get older and want to stretch out—rather than rush through—the years, I find myself savoring micro moments. I don’t ask myself if I’ll want to remember something in the future; I just take a picture or a note just in case and then get back to savoring. I tell myself it’s the savoring that matters. There’s no telling, out of all your collected records, what you’ll remember in the end. What will be important enough to remember. Of course, our brains have a negativity bias so I know I’ll always remember my car overheating on a drive from Toledo to Columbus, but really I’ll remember this because it’s part of what I believe is the ideal memory sandwich (made up of something new, something meaningful, and something fun, likely all three at once): driving a long distance on my own for the first time, trusting in the kindness of the strangers who saw me stranded and helped me with my car, and eventually making it to my friend’s house in Columbus where we sat on her back deck and shared two bottles of wine and a pack of cigarettes and talked all night.

Fun is a weird thing when it comes to memory; it’s more of a feeling than an activity. You can do a “fun” activity or go to a “fun” event and not remember it because you didn’t have fun. Similarly, if you have fun often and in the same way and/or with the same people, your mind can start to blend these things together into one big memory ball. When you relay these kinds of memories, you might start “Remember that one time…” But perhaps most importantly, fun is fleeting. That’s why we take pictures or videos to commemorate those moments, hoping to retain that memory of a feeling. I’ve never been drawn to any social media where the pictures disappear after a certain amount of time; I want all of my memories imprinted in full and linear, a story from beginning to end. A greater appreciation for today because I remember yesterday.

I am someone who usually talks a lot but I’m also introverted, so a lot of the memories that stick in my head are just bits of conversation. I gain a lot of inspiration and fulfillment from meaningful discourse with others, and I’m good at remembering things I overhear people say to others in conversation. It’s interesting how these types of memories stay the same but my reactions to them change over time. Where once I may have been angry at something someone said, I now have understanding; where once I had judgment, I now have sympathy; where once I felt ashamed, I now feel secure. These memories grow like people do.

Of course, memories help form who we are. On a separate Toledo-to-Columbus trip, the car (which car? whose car?) broke down in middle-of-nowhere Ohio, and my boyfriend aka future husband and I had to leave it at an auto shop overnight, rent a car (I only remembered the car rental the morning after writing this), and hurry the rest of the way to make it to the concert in Columbus on time. The next morning we learned our car’s engine was a goner, so we had the car towed back to Toledo, the two of us squeezed in the front seat next to the tow truck driver. This is about the time I started to hate Columbus. When I had to go back there several years later for a wedding, I clenched my teeth a little. No matter how much fun I’ve had there over the years, I still associate Columbus with car trouble and look for every excuse to dislike the place (“It’s too clean!!”)

In retrospect, does it really matter what year that was (2015—I looked at the dates on the concert pics) or which car that happened to (wait, it’ll come to me)? Probably not, but I enjoy collecting and organizing my memories like a stamp collector enjoys their stamps. I regret that I didn’t get to see my grandma much when I was an adult; I only recall seeing her once, maybe twice. I wonder what her final memories were, what stuck with her until the end, what it felt like to lose track... No matter what memories fade for me, I’ll be happy to remember her.