The memories we never really lose

Readers might have noticed my infatuation with the past. I often relate my childhood experience to a modern day issue. I often drag my school or university days when I write about today’s youth. I love my past, but sometimes what worries me the most is what if these memories disappear or fade gradually. As we age, our memory becomes weak and we start forgetting the past events. Occasionally, I struggle to remember the name of someone who I met a couple of weeks ago.

I still have several friends who narrate a two decade old event with minute detail. I envy their brain health. Now I find this excellent blog on Minute Mirror site which says something that gave me real comfort.

It said forgotten memories may not be gone at all. They may just be sleeping. Scientists studied fruit flies, of all creatures, and found something remarkable. When they placed these tiny flies back in an environment similar to where a memory first formed, that memory came alive again. It was not dead. It was only quiet, waiting for the right door to knock on.

Now I am no scientist, friends. I am just a man who spends too much time looking backward. But when I read this, something in my chest loosened up a little. Because I always feared that my old memories were leaking out of me, drop by drop, the way water leaks from a cracked clay pot. I feared that one day I would wake up and my childhood street would be gone from my mind, my mother’s voice reading me stories would be gone, the smell of my school canteen would be gone.

But this research tells a gentler story. It tells me that memory is not a candle that simply burns out. It is more like a lamp switched off in a room I stopped visiting. The lamp is still there. The bulb still works. I only need to walk back into that room, and somehow, the light comes on again.

Think about it, friends. Have you ever caught a scent, maybe of rain falling on dry earth, and suddenly you are eight years old again, standing on your grandmother’s veranda? Have you ever heard an old song on the radio and felt your whole childhood come rushing back in one breath? That is not magic. That is your brain finding the right key for a door it had quietly locked.

Of course, the article is honest enough to admit that scientists still do not fully understand everything. Sometimes the brain brings back memories that are not entirely true. It mixes things up. It adds a little color here, removes a little detail there. Human memory, unlike a fruit fly’s, is a complicated thing. But even with its flaws, I find this idea beautiful. Our memories are patient. They do not vanish just because we stop visiting them. They simply wait.

I think of my old friends, the ones who can recall an event from twenty years ago as if it happened yesterday. I used to envy them, thinking their brains were simply built better than mine. Now I wonder if maybe they just keep walking back into those old rooms more often than I do. Maybe remembering is not only about a strong brain. Maybe it is about visiting.

So here is what I plan to do, friends. I plan to walk old streets again. I plan to visit my old school gate, even if it now sells mobile phone covers instead of candy. I plan to play those old songs my father used to hum while shaving in the morning. I plan to open every quiet room in my mind, one by one, and let the light back in.

Because somewhere in me, my mother is still calling me in for dinner. Somewhere in me, my school bell is still ringing. Somewhere in me, a boy is still running home before the streetlights come on.

They are not gone.

They were only sleeping.

And tonight, God willing, I intend to wake every single one of them up.