(art by Jungho Lee)
Remembering is a kind of selective storytelling. Over the years, we revise and rewrite our memories to fit a narrative of how we see our past. Though my sister and I grew up together in the same house, when we reflect on memories from our childhoods, the stories diverge because we remember things differently. Often, I can recall far more than she can. Having come out of traumatic childhoods, she has repressed a lot of the memories so that there are blank spaces in her own personal narrative.
“Do you remember that time…,” I often ask and my sister replies, “No, I don’t.” She will also ask, “How do you remember all that?”
Within the last couple of years, my Father was diagnosed with dementia. This is a disease that woefully removes whole narratives from memory, giving only parts of the past, while greedily devouring much of the present. If memories are who we are, who are we when those memories disappear?
What do we do when we lose part of our own story? How does that shape us?
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