What Else Have I Forgotten?

Even with widow brain (still a thing!), I would say that I have a better than average long term memory. While my short term memory is far from amazing now, there are moments from the past that I really can remember with astounding detail (there are several people who could back me up on this). I’m a very visual person, and when I think back on a memory I can see it in my mind, down to tiny random details. Sure, there have been times that I would much rather I did not have that ability, like remembering so many things from the hospital. But overall it feels like a gift having such a connection to my personal history, remembering specifics from various momentous and everyday events, how I felt at the time, what was said, or what my reactions were to different things. I don’t remember everything, of course, but I do have many memories that are quite vivid. Even things from when I was a little girl (my first distinct memory is from when I was two).

What I’m also discovering, though, is there have been some times when my brain has rewritten the narrative of what actually happened. I think we all do that to some degree, with our own biases or limited perspectives or ways our brain may be trying to protect us. It’s been unsettling, however, discovering some things involving Kenny that I’ve misremembered, or was flat out wrong about the details.

I had an experience with this last week. I was doing a search through my texts trying to find the report time for A’s MRI on Wednesday. The first message that came up was one Kenny wrote me on August 18, 2020 telling me about the MRI the doctor wanted him to do, and how they were then keeping him longer to do more imaging because they “may have seen something” (no one was using the word tumor yet). I then sat and read through our entire texting stream from that date until, well, there were no more texts from him (last one was February 16, 2021 – also the last day I was able to have a real, lucid, albeit brief and in and out conversation with him). I was surprised to realize that I hadn’t read through those a single time since he died. Not sure why. Maybe because of how hard it is to so clearly see the degeneration of his texts, how evident it was that I was losing him bit by bit, and knowing how it was going to end. Or maybe I just didn’t think about it, I don’t know.

But doing so made me realize that I had forgotten. I’d told myself that I really had lost Kenny long before his death on March 24, 2021. That I had been carrying an impossibly heavy load on my own from the beginning. And that’s simply not true. I had forgotten how involved Kenny still was in our family life for those first few months (of course he was!), weighing in from the hospital on things with the kids, checking in with one another on financial matters, our sending photos and updates throughout the day. Or our harebrained plans of how to sneak me in to the hospital to see him and his taking pictures from his hospital window so we could triangulate the one small spot where I could bring the kids and he could at least see us, knowing that we likely wouldn’t have been able to see him. There was his troubleshooting computer issues for me from afar, or volunteering to do things like picking up the grocery order when he could still drive.

This one feels so dumb, but I honestly had forgotten how funny we were with one another, how easy the back and forth was and what a big part humor (OK, and some playful innuendo) played for both of us even when he was sick and in pain. It has been so hard for me lately to really remember what it was like having a partner. Getting the reminder from those texts was like reclaiming my husband. The real Kenny, not defined by an illness or treatment plans.

It has made me question things, though. It’s like my brain has simply blocked out many specifics because then the loss would feel too painful. What else have I forgotten, and will I get those memories back?