Grief affects everyone differently, and this too applies to how it impacts our memories. In my personal experience of grief I mostly doubted memories of another’s life, whereas complicated grievers doubt memories of their own lives. They lose themselves, and their memories of their own lives, and can only retain memories involving the person they have lost.
Those who suffer from complicated grief seem to have memories that override the present, making them unable to concentrate or function in their normal lives. Memories involving the person who had passed away were comparatively intact. However, the memories of the complicated grievers were only overgeneral when they did not involve the deceased.
This phenomenon was generally referred to as having ‘overgeneral memory’. They found that the 13 participants who met the criteria for complicated grief had trouble accessing specific memories of their lives, and they had difficulty imagining events in the future. In their research on the subject, Robinaugh and McNally recruited 33 participants who had lost a life partner within the last three years. In the worst cases, we can even experience something referred to as ‘ complicated grief.’ According to memory scientists Donald Robinaugh and Richard McNally in a research paper published in 2013 “Complicated grief is associated with impairment in the ability to retrieve specific autobiographical memories.” I certainly keep thinking back to Mark’s head against the glass. For one thing, we can have intrusive memories of the deceased that pop up when we don’t want them to.
Being touched by death also has the potential to adversely affect our memories. Like a mosaic, we all contribute the broken shards of our memories to a larger picture that, while imperfect, creates a beautiful whole life.īut it’s not all pretty art analogies and family memories. The family has created a past that never was, in our own attempt to understand our relationship with his death. Mark, as the family remembers him, never existed until now. As Neimeyer and his colleagues say “a central task of grieving is the reconstruction of those narratives.” From my own research, I can tell you that these reconstructive processes can be very creative, covertly weaving compelling pieces of fiction into the story of a life. Information is disclosed, information is absorbed, and memories change in the process.Īccording to psychological scientist Robert Neimeyer and his colleagues in 2014, grief involves “processes by which meanings are found, appropriated or assembled at least as fully between people as within them.”Īfter the death of a loved one we look for meaning, we create meaning, and in the process we often agree with others on what a person’s life must have been like. Certainly in the context of grief, memories are often elicited and shared in group settings with family members and friends. I realized that much of what we were sharing as memories had probably never happened. Memories were all we had left of him.īut I encountered a conundrum that many others did not. We desperately needed to keep his memories alive. I saw this happening to all his family and friends. I was overcome with an immeasurable desire to tell and retell everyone who would listen about every moment I could remember spending with him. But it was not all bad, for in this darkest time I still found moments of light: the beautiful memories that remained of his life. Grief is the deepest emotion I have ever felt a combination of devastation, despair, powerlessness, and existential fear. In my memory of the event I can still see him where I found him at home, with his head against the glass and his eyes rolled back, breathing heavily. Then the medics told us he had suffered a blockage in his heart. He had been in good health, so we suspected that everything would be fine.
I was the first responder, with 911 on the line as I kept him breathing until the paramedics arrived. My stepfather, Mark, to whom I was exceptionally close, passed away suddenly six weeks ago. All memories can be false memories, even memories of those we love most.īecause I consider writing cathartic, and enjoy gaining insight into my own internal processes by understanding the science behind them, let’s talk about memories and death. There is no memory safe house that keeps our most cherished memories from corruption. If all memories can be flawed, as I argue at length in my book ‘ The Memory Illusion’, then these memories can be too. So, why should I trust memories of a deceased loved one? My grieving brain responds to this with " because I desperately want to," but I know this is a childishly flawed argument made in a moment of weakness. As a memory scientist, I don’t trust my memories of my own life.
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