I love memories of the good times in my life. Whether they’re pictures, videos, or flashbacks in my head, I can spend all day wandering around in them and reliving them. They make each day better and I can’t imagine my life without them.
As grateful as I feel for memories, I can also feel sad when they involve loved ones who are no longer in my life. If I’m looking at some kind of media outside myself or reminiscing in my mind, I can see, hear, and even feel them, but I can’t interact with them in new ways in the real world. It’s as if there is an invisible barrier that allows me to see them but also prevents us from being together like we once were.
I often think about this with regard to a friend of mine whom I haven’t gotten to visit in person since late 2019. Due to a lot of things that I don’t understand or care to explain here, I fear that the friendship is over. This is especially painful for me because she’s been kinder to me than most other humans I’ve known and helped me get through some incredibly hard times. Sometimes I reminisce about the times we spent together, whether it was eating, driving around, or just enjoying each other’s company. Those memories are so strong and vivid that it’s almost as if I’m back there. The painful part is that I’m stuck here now thinking about those great times instead of being there now making more wonderful memories.
There is even more pain with my memories of my dog Sawyer. So often, I wish I could reach through the memories and make my younger self take Sawyer on more walks, open my door whenever he knocked on it, do several other nice things with him, and avoid doing some things that hurt him. I hate that we won’t have any other opportunities to make Earthly memories together. My hope beyond hope is that we’ll someday get to make Heavenly memories together forever after I die. Forgiving myself for not doing better during our time together has been such a struggle, and I wish many of my memories with Sawyer were better.
The emotional pain around these and other memories can be downright debilitating at times. Because of this, I sometimes wonder how I’d feel if my memory were much weaker. Would I have less emotional pain over lovely times gone by if I didn’t remember as many of them in as great detail as I do? The case of Eugene Pauly comes to mind here. Known to the public only as “E.P.” until after his death, this man received such damage to his brain later in life that he could no longer form new long-term memories. While his long-term memory still worked, and he could remember many events from long before the brain damage, he almost immediately forgot anything new he learned in his final few decades of life. Despite regularly being visited by the same researchers for years, he always forgot their names, what they were there to do, and that he had ever met them at all. He didn’t even remember that he had such a huge memory issue. Those who met him noted that he seemed to be an easygoing man who had little to no stress in life. Without going to that extreme, I wonder if a more normal memory would result in less stress for me as well.
While the issues I’ve had with my memory and overall brain function since a head injury in November of 2021 haven’t been debilitating, they have made me rely more on calendars, pictures, videos, and other things outside myself to keep track of the important things in my life. My reliance on those things has been exacerbated by the occasional brain fog and absentmindedness from the emotional pain of 2020-2022 (especially Sawyer’s death and some bad health issues). Fortunately, the emotional work I’ve done has reduced the negative impact of the injury; I look forward to seeing how much more progress I can make as I continue to heal from both new and old pain. As I do, I’ll continue to fondly remember all the loved ones, enjoyable experiences, beautiful places, and other wonderful parts of my life that are no longer with me, in addition to striving to make many more lovely memories with however much time I have left.