On the Fickleness of Memory

What's been on my mind (or not) lately . . .

Photo by sarandy westfall on Unsplash

I visited NY recently. Before this visit, I hadn’t been back in 8 years despite having called the city home for over 15. Also, my memory has been menopausally glitchy lately, and I’ve been paying attention to its antics. So, I was curious how much I’d remember of the city and how I’d find my way around it. I am happy to report that my concerns were unfounded. As soon as I landed, my body remembered. I entered the taxi and my arms naturally reached over to turn off the taxi TV before it began to blast. In the city, my eyes recognized corners; my legs knew where to take me. My feet still insisted on standing on the same spots — on the actual street while waiting to cross, on specific ends of the subway platforms — and still insisted on ignoring red pedestrian lights, inherently knowing when the cars would really start hurtling towards me. My body took over; my mind was on vacation.

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In Paris on a solo trip, I found myself walking the streets of the 1st arrondissement. I rarely do that; I usually only visit the 1st when I’m with my family and my Mom insists on taking photos in front of the Louvre (every.single.time) or window shopping. I turned the corner onto Rue Saint-Honoré, and I felt like I sliced through a thick cloud of nostalgia. And guilt. I was there without her, on her favorite street, in her favorite city. I’ve been getting these intense flashes of yearning and homesickness lately, set off by the most inconsequential of triggers. Some form of déjà vu?

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Last month, I remembered I was due for my annual rheumatologist check up. I reached for my 2024 planner to check when my last visit was. As I flipped through the pages, I saw that next to July 18, I had written LAST CHEMO! in big bold letters .

I fell back in my seat, “Was it JUST last year that I was doing chemo??” Images flashed through my head: bleak chemo room; fingers and toes crammed into ice packs; a tangle of tubes attached to my arm; flashing machines. I shuddered. I remembered the claustrophobia of those chemo days; of my existence held captive by incessant appointments, scans, exhaustion and nose bleeds.

Then a voice cut into the melodramatic reel playing in my head: ”Waaaait a minute,” it screeched. “It wasn’t THAT bad, remember??” I opened google photos and scrolled back to 2023 and 2024 — there were lots of photos of wild flowers in the garden, lots of photos of food I cooked, lots of photos with visiting friends and family, and LOTS of travel photos (Lisbon, Porto, Asturias, Barcelona, Valladolid, Paris, London, Manila, Morocco . . how the F did i travel that much??). If it weren’t for the giggling wig and bald selfies, I wouldn’t have realized these were chemo days. I realized I wasn’t miserable. I had forgotten that I was actually strong and thriving!

I snapped back to the present. I saw the 2024 planner on my lap and thought, “What was I going to do with this thing again?”

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Memory has been on my mind lately. Observing my parents’ bouts with impaired memory and noticing some of mine, I’ve been extra conscious of the forms memory (or the lack of it) has been presenting in my head. Why did New York, a city of so many years ago, feel like yesterday, and chemo of just last year feel like lifetimes ago? Why are my memories of chemo so falsely biased? Why am I getting these weird sentimental surges when I travel? Why can’t I find the word for . . . anything? And the bigger question: how do I navigate aging and changing memory?

Properly concerned, I read up.¹ And was properly fascinated.

Bear with me.

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Apparently, memory is not one homogenous unitary thing, like when we say “you’re losing your memory”. It is not one thing to lose. Memory can be sliced into many different types:

• Semantic memory — this is the “academic” memory; facts, dates, trivia. What is the tallest mountain in the world? Who is the Filipino-American singer who sang Treasure? What is the Spanish word for needle? Semantic memory is explicit memory, i.e., it requires active and conscious recall. Depending on how often we retrieve the information, it can be short-term or long-term.

• Procedural memory — this is the “riding a bike” memory. This is what allows us to type without looking at the keyboard, to sing songs of our childhood, to know to say “a unicorn” instead of “an unicorn”. Procedural memory is learned through repetition. It is implicit memory, i.e., recollection is unconscious and effortless. It is also long-term; once we learn it, we keep it.

• Working memory — this is our “temporary work space” that holds and processes information to make decisions and do life. To make the appointment but not on Friday afternoon because I have a lunch; to buy the 5 things on the grocery-list after picking up the kids so the ice cream doesn’t melt so I might as well go to the bank now. Working memory is explicit memory and short-term.

• Emotional memory — this is the storage of intense feelings. These are emotional responses learned through experience, even if we may not remember the actual experience. This is why we might get agitated when our partner doesn’t pick up the phone, why we might cower when we hear people arguing, why we might have a strong aversion to moths. This is usually implicit and long-term.

• Episodic memory - This is the memories we think of when we think of “memories”. This is our experiences, our personal stories, our narratives connected to time, place, and emotions. Where were we? What happened? Who else was around? What did you say that caused her to say that?

Episodic memories are never perfect recordings of events. No matter how recently they occurred or how exceptional we are at recall, these memories are never infallible simply because our brains cannot and do not capture every detail. Thus, memories are reconstructions of events. And when our brains reconstruct the scene and fill in blanks, these blanks are constantly influenced by the present — new information, our current emotions, contamination by other memories, suggestions. If we are staring directly at the beautiful face of our ex, we might remember the difficult relationship with more tenderness than it deserves. The divorce might feel much further away if we were now remarried than if we were single. If someone asks, “did you see her shove the spoon into his mouth?”, we might recall a more violent scene as compared to if the question were posed as “did you see her quickly feed him the soup?” As we age and each time we recall events, these memories are further modified or lost.

Finally, while the present strongly influences our memories, our memories also strongly influence the present! A dangerous feedback loop if we are not conscious. What we remember affects our sense of self and influences our actions. If we remember our abusive ex with tenderness, it is likely that we go back to him when he pleads. On the other side of the same coin, things we don’t remember (explicitly or implicitly) cannot influence us.

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“And so why is this fascinating? How does this help?” you might wonder.

Knowing these things about memory has helped me understand the twists and tricks happening in my head. By understanding the different types of memory, I can decipher which one is being triggered, then I can keep calm and carry on. I now understand that it was procedural memory at play in New York that made it feel like it was yesterday. I now understand that the places I’ve visited with family is laden with emotional charge, particularly since I have been missing my parents a lot these days. I also now understand that my false memories of chemo may have been tainted by my friends’ recounting of their own experiences, by doctors on Youtube warning us of the dangers of chemo and how we should sign up for their detox retreats, or by my mom’s current chemo journey. It may also be my way of succumbing to chemo trauma as the norm. Or perhaps it’s my body’s way of protecting me from going back there. And I also now understand that chemo feels so far away because my current life has changed drastically and I’ve mentally left cancer behind me.

But more importantly, understanding memory has given me a compassionate framework around age-related memory issues.

I now know that saying “Dad, you’re getting forgetful” doesn’t make sense. Plus, it’s not nice. Instead, I will celebrate the memories that he is full of! I will appreciate that he is full of procedural memory: he remembers songs and poems of his childhood; that he can still develop new procedural memory: he remembers new tunes and new dance steps learned in dance class; that he has good working memory: he can make decisions and form opinions; that he has passable semantic memory; and that he has excellent long-term episodic memory of his childhood. Too excellent that he tells us the stories every day! Wins!

Knowing that what we believe to remember influences our current sense of self, I will also no longer correct my Dad when he cheekily tells his doctor, “Yes, I exercise every day. I play golf and walk 2 laps around the polo field,” even if that was the truth 5 years ago. Because how else can we explain his constantly impressive blood test results?

I don’t know where J and I will live when we’re older, but I do know that the language I will use to communicate with doctors and caregivers will need to flow from procedural memory. I cannot allow the older version of myself to have to retrieve vocabulary and grammar rules from an aged semantic memory. So, while it is early, I can either choose to practice my new chosen language until my tongue bleeds, or pack up my bags for linguistically-friendlier shores.

Knowing that mental capacity is increasingly limited as we age, I know that I need to pick my battles. So I will choose not to sweat it if I don’t remember Bruno Mars being Filipino or Mt Everest being tall; I can outsource such semantic memory to google and AI. I refuse, however, to outsource the precious processing power of my working memory. So, if I want to keep my working memory sharp, I will not succumb, now or ever, to the literal mind-numbing convenience of AI doing my thinking for me.

But I am also keenly aware that working memory overload is real. So, if my working memory has to be fully functioning (like say, if I had to write an essay to convince friends that understanding memory is important), I will hide my phone and clear out mental clutter of other tasks by doing them now or setting reminders for later. In the same way, I will also be mindful when J is overloading his working memory. If he’s listening to the news, weeding the garden, and talking to his dad at the same time, I will know it is probably not a good time to remind him to check the plumbing.

I used to think life is too short to do things over, so I never watched movies twice, never read books twice, and I would write diary entries but never read them. I now realize the importance of revisiting — re-reading journals, re-viewing photos, re-telling stories among friends. As life proceeds, re-living events close to the source delivers near-original accounts, kicks up raw emotions, and shows us how steady we’ve been or how evolved we’ve become. There’s a learning technique called “spaced repetition” which I try to use for language learning. I will now try to use it for Life.

And finally, it is important to remember that our future unfolds from the memories we hold, and yet, our memories are so fickle. That thought can be oppressive, but it can also be promising if we understand the complexities of our memories. Beneath our surface-level instinctive memories are layers upon layers of texture. If we dig beneath blanket statements like “He was the one that got away; I will never find a love like that,” or “Chemo sucks. It ruined me,” or “New York was the best time of my life. It’s downhill from there,” we might hit upon the wisdom of a nuanced existence, and find more stable, considered ground on which to build the rest of our days.

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Thanks for reading! I hope this piece resonated. If it did, may I ask that you give it a like, send me a message/comment, or share it with friends? It’s nice to know that there’s someone on the other end of this reacting. Thank you.

1. “Read up” meaning read, listened, or watched stuff with Sigmund Freud on emotional memory, Elizabeth Loftus on false memories and the power of suggestion, Dr. Dan Siegel on implicit memories, and Dr. Rahul Jandial on types of memories and identity.