A sort of moody, grey-day blog post on memory

[aldersprig]

My grandma showed up in my dream the night before last.

She does that a lot, actually.

She's been gone for more than half my life, but she shows up in my dreams.

The worst is forgetting she's not there anymore.

read on…

Comments

[kelkyag]

<nod> Most of my memories before college (and some later) are snapshots and stories, with occasional scenes. The sharpest ones usually involve negative emotions -- "warning, don't do that again". The strongest ones are the ones that got brought up or replayed a lot, for one reason or another, though those are also vulnerable to turning into stories, or the ones that are attached to physical things (good at providing recurring reminders/replays when I see them).

But it doesn’t tell me what to do about the ones that are slipping away with time and degeneration.
One possible option: you're a writer. Write them down. They don't have to be for anyone but you. This is one of the things diaries (and blogs and dream journals and ...) are for. My journal-writing has been irregular at best, but I'm frequently surprised by how much other context has stayed attached to the words when I go back to them.