I found out this week that a grade school classmate passed away - but that’s not who I’m grieving. But hearing of his death apparently kicked me back into grieving for someone who died a year ago , whom I hadn’t spoken to in about 40 years and it’s actually worse this time
I knew he was on Facebook because we had a mutual friend. I had meant to get in touch with him but never did and then it was too late - so some of what I’m feeling is regret that I left it too long. But there’s more - I hadn’t thought about him really, until I saw we had a mutual friend on Facebook about five years ago. Before that , I probably hadn’t even thought of him in thirty years. But now I almost can’t stop and something has happened that didn’t happen right after I heard of his death. I’m trying to remember things from when I knew him - and I find that I don’t have many memories of things that I know I did. Like there’s no way I didn’t go to a movie between 1978 and 1981 but I don’t remember a single one. And some of the memories I do have are kind of mixed up. For example, I have some memories of certain things that happened during my high school summers - but for my memories of the timing to be accurate , I would have had to be in high school for at least 6 summers ( which I was not). So I think some of it is grieving for the memories that I don’t have - I do remember big events like the prom and graduation but not the more mundane events.
Why am I writing this post? I guess to see if anyone has any advice about how to work through this and whether the memory thing is normal - both the forgetting and being kind of sad about forgetting.
I think the memory thing is normal. After 44 years together, Mr. Legend and I have discovered a new hobby: comparing our memories of things we did in our youth. Once we get past his, “Did I ever tell you about the time when (girlfriend before me) and I did (activity or trip we did together),” we sail right into disagreeing about the details.
As for the sense of loss, the older I get, the worse that is. I see an obituary of someone I haven’t seen since the 80’s, and it’s not as if I was going to ever get in touch to catch up, but now, it’s not even a vague possibility. When someone from your past dies, a little chunk of that past goes with them. It’s natural to mourn that.
As for working through it, have you tried writing down some of your memories? It doesn’t have to be some big memoir for posterity and it doesn’t have to be complete (or, really, accurate), but if you can put some of what you do remember on paper, you may find other memories returning.
Not exactly in the same boat, but I didn’t find out about the death of a former friend until months after the fact. I wasn’t invited to his wake or funeral. What helped was having my own wake. A coworker hosts a music lounge on MS Teams every Thursday, and I asked her to play songs I identified as great memories I had of my friend, such as getting busted for drinking in the parking lot at a James Taylor concert, playing air guitar to a song at a party, etc. By the time the song list wrapped up, I was bawling.
So, try putting together a Spotify list of songs from that time period that represent experiences you might have shared with your friend, or tunes that you really liked at the time that capture some kind of characteristic of theirs. Let the music be your goodbye ceremony.
Your own memories being more of a kaleidoscope of mostly-relevant fragments than a coherent documentary is IME 100% normal.
I think of the entirety of my childhood thought grad school graduation as a slide show with about 20 slides in the tray, mostly out of order. Those very few scenes are persistent and readily recallable. The rest simply does not exist.
The “slide tray” for the next 20 years, up to age 40-something has more slides, but not a lot more. I much more have the impression of having memories, not having memories themselves. Or so it seems.
Am I weird in this? Maybe. But if your experience is similar, rest assured there’s at least two of us.