We all just remember what impacts us most so one person's nothing is someone else's thing they will never forget and we hall have different points of view. The differences don't mean one or another is false, <snip> As for you & sisters memories, maybe you are both right and the person telling the story got it mixed up telling you both something different,
This, right here.
How we remember things, and what gets sorted into long-, short-, or intermediate-term memory is very dependent on our past experiences, our current situation(s), and our stage of development (if you are/were a child at the time in question).
So even two siblings, living in the same house, raised by the same parents will remember some things differently, even though it happened to both children simultaneously. This could be because the older sibling was able to see and factor into their experience a subtle part of the overall situation. However, a younger sibling might not be at a developmental level to appreciate the complexities of the experience. Therefore, their memories of the same event will differ from one another.
So for example, when my boys were young, their beloved pet cat died unexpectedly. None of them had ever known life without this cat. Our 2 oldest boys were in their mid-teens, and our two youngest were tweens. After Sharky passed, we went as a family to the local pet cemetery to arrange for cremation. There, the cemetery owners have their own animals set up as an informal “petting zoo” of sorts because they said they want children who come there, don’t leave having had only a sad experience. They want kids to have a chance to pet a goat or feed a pot-bellied pig, ducks, chicken or geese. Or sit with or cuddle a cat. They don’t want to be remembered only as a place of death, so they have cultivated an area of life, too.
Now when we went, all of our boys interacted with the animals. However, now as adults, our older boys remember being really sad when we arrived but less so when we left. Our younger 2 boys only remember the pot-bellied pig that followed them around to get the duck food. In their head they know
why we were there, but neither remembers giving Sharky last pets, or adding a thumbprint to the clay paw print pressing that the attendant did. They don’t remember the sad part at all. But I assure you, they were all crying. Son #3 even made a comment that it felt weird being happy when he thought he was supposed to be sad, and we talked about how sometimes you can be both at the same time, and it’s ok. He does not remember that discussion at all.
So which of my boys has the “right” memories? All four of them have a different description of that afternoon. All of them have a different memory of finding out Sharky had died, even though we told them all at the same time. So again, who is “right”?
The answer is— all of them… and none of them. None of their accounts mesh precisely with my journal entry of the day. But all of them have something in common among the others. The reality is that they all have the true memory
from their own perspectives, given their life experiences to that point.
The time to discuss differences in their recollections is not at a funeral or probably not even at a happy event like a wedding. Basically, anytime emotions are already heightened is a bad time to hash things out. A better time might be when they’re over for a Sunday dinner or similar occasion when everyone’s emotions aren’t already right on edge.
