See what I mean with a blurry memory? It takes some time for me to invoke childhood memories. Had to write this all up just to realise that. <_> It's really scary.
Memories are not a photo taken by a camera, they are like a fading chalk drawing that has to be partially redrawn every time you look at it. Our current emotions and situations warp our memories every time we recall them. Rarely will you hold an entire event for long, but sometimes you're lucky enough to retain pieces. That is where a journal can be handy, you can voice a memory with an emotion fairly close to when it happened and with a lot less "filling in the blanks". Most memories are pretty blurry, it is just that most people don't take the time to look at the picture long enough to realize it, they see vaguely what they want at the time and assume it is what happened. So if your memories are blurry and hard to recall at least you know it is likely that pieces are still intact, which is the best most of us can hope for.
I don't know my blood father he left when I was 1, and I could care less about the misc. abusive assholes my mother was married to at various times (I don't hold it against her, life and love are confusing), but the man I consider my father died a few years back. I only vaguely remember events about him even though he's only been gone for a few years, but I do remember the things he taught me very clearly. He was never the most social person, and didn't tend to show his feelings, but he was decent to people and made a lot of sacrifices for others. It is what I respected about him most, it is what I remember most.
You might be surprised to find that if you think more about what you learned from someone (and I don't even mean directly) you will recall it with a lot more clarity than what you remember about them (i.e. the details of who they were). We live on through what we give, what we teach. Who we were fades rather quickly (there's only so much the mind can retain before it needs to start creating shortcuts or letting information go) but what we stand for and what mattered to us (for better or worse) can last throughout the ages.
I am very sorry for your loss, but it sounds like under the surface a lot was planted so maybe the gains just take time to grow and bloom.
According to a recent study, just as you can’t step in the same river twice, your memories are changed by the act of recalling them, meaning that every memory we have is colored by the times we’ve recollected it before.The research, conducted by Northwestern Medicine and published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience, shows that recalling a memory more often makes that memory less accurate, and that every time you take a memory off the shelf in your brain, you put it back just a tiny bit different.
That’s because instead of remembering the actual memory, you’re recalling the memory of the last time you remembered it and any mistakes that might have been introduced there. Like a game of human telephone, those mistakes can build on one another over time, leaving out details and introducing mistakes.
When the results were analysed, the researchers found that participants were much more likely to remember some sorts of details than others. The 'what', 'where' and 'who' were commonly remembered. Other details -- what the participants were thinking at the time, the weather and their age -- were less likely to be recalled. The time of day the event took place or what they were wearing were even less likely to be recalled.
Player
