Is memory a thing to be chosen? Are recollections deemed inappropriate or unhelpful, ones that we should banish? And when they visit us unguarded we should distract from them for the sake of our mental “health?”

I ask these questions because of course I prefer to visit my happy memories. Yet, the even the favored ones of my life come with a certain sadness simply because they are no more. A long time ago I learned to call that bittersweet.

If I’ve visited with my happy memories enough to allow them to just be there and allow that it might include some melancholy for awhile, and to stay with that, sometimes the sadness shape shifts. What I mean is that it doesn’t always lead to the same emotional place or to the same conclusions. Many times it does, and that’s what I mean about allowing it to keep coming back for awhile over time. And then sometimes it shifts – not away from melancholy but to another “memory of the memory” that brings an unnoticed nuance into view, like seeing some amazing detail in a photo that you missed before, even though you’ve looked at it many many times. How did I not see that? How did I not remember it?

You can’t get there by not revisiting, though, and you can keep going over the same happy details the memory has always relied on – same characters, places, sequence of events, and outcomes. After awhile I think that lack of an opening for “something else” to show up starts to shrink the memory until it becomes maybe a little trite? Not worth wasting a lot of attention on anymore? I’m starting to think the story is told and the memory revisited so that unseen (and unforeseen) details have a chance to emerge. As though they were hiding before. Waiting for me to catch up. Maybe waiting for recollecting in a group so others can contribute their threads of memory and allowing space for what may always have been there so it can bubble up. Or waiting for questions to be asked that weren’t asked before and for communiqués to come through to our consciousness that we wouldn’t or couldn’t let in before.

So if I apply that practice to the grief-filled memories I’d rather gloss over, distract from, and even forget? Same thing. But it’s harder, hurts more, and is lonelier. Because there’s not much (any) sweet to offset the bitter in the beginning. The other details haven’t had a chance to emerge because it hurts so much and we turn away. And staying with this kind of “memory practice” (grief practice) might even be looked upon as detrimental or abnormal (it most certainly is by our culture) and I’m not suggesting that it’s for everyone. And to make it all the more daunting, there is no formality to it or training or teachers. So why do it? Well, there’s a chance for the shape shifting, some revelation, and maybe communiqués. And I don’t think these are promised or guaranteed. It’s a practice that has no precedent in my memory, but there seems to be hints of it around from people who lived and died before me. I’m listening and I hear them.