A life ended

At the end of 2012 we learned that a close relative had been diagnosed with cancer. A year later she passed away, a little over thirty years old.

We are still coming to terms with the distress of the final stages of her illness and that she is now gone, while trying to gain perspective by remembering her whole life.

She figures in many of my memory tags. I know exactly when certain events happened in the progression of her illness. I remember the special days we spent together both before and after her diagnosis.

This includes memory tags I have added retrospectively to the blanks on my mental calendar before I began this process of remembering every day that passes. We were together on 1 January 2011, the month when I begin the day-per-month reviews.

I was walking and speaking with her father soon after New Year this year and spoke to him about New Year three years before. We shared memories and stories. It was good to remember her, but there was a question that kept coming to mind, but was too painful to ask because it was no longer relevant: what were her plans?

When a life ends we have only the days lived to remember.

A phrase on cards and fridge magnets says that no-one is truly gone if they are remembered.

And so I am glad to have these memories and to come across them regularly following my refresh technique. Not just of this relative, but all the family and friends I share my life with.

Hello mate

I understand that in the acting profession people call each other "darling" because they want to be friendly to people they meet - they may have worked with them or hope too - but can't always remember their names. This is particularly true for those who are famous and may not be sure if someone knows them or just knows who they are.

I'm not famous, but find it worse when someone knows my name and I cannot remember theirs. The window when I feel able to ask for a reminder, if it exists at all, is very narrow. It becomes difficult when engrossed in conversation with someone who knows my name to stop and say, "Tell me your name again". So I try to get the question in early and then remember the name. Using it repeatedly is a good way.

Then I include the persons face and name in the image for that day, as described previously. This sometimes includes a mental picture of everyone around a table at a dinner party or meeting and saying their name to myself as I try to recall their face. If I end up chatting with someone at the runs in the park I often attend, I'll ask their name and make a point of remembering it.

From this I've realised that while remembering the name of strangers you have met once can impress them, it can also be awkward for them and even unsettling. Why should a someone you may only vaguely remember talking to months ago remember your name? It helps if I reference back to the past meeting when I begin.

It is interesting how people respond when they do not remember my name. Few actually ask. Several times I've had people call me "mate" or "friend" - though not yet "darling".

So this is a new dilema to be resolved: how do I remind people of my name when they have clearly forgotten it - and possibly me - when I greet them by theirs?

Again its best to get in through the narrow window when first meeting again: "I'm Lembran. We met at the run at the beginning of October, I think it was."

Best to say "I think it was", I feel, than freak them out by giving the exact date, plucked from my mental calendar.

History

I've commented before that I often find it harder to recall the memory tags for recent days than for days long gone.

This has been particularly true this week, for two conflicting reasons. On the one hand, the days are similar in routine and location. On the other hand, there have been some significant developments in resolving some personal issues through discussions with my wife.

Information has filled my mind and it has made it difficult to separate out what happened on one day rather than another.

Only as the week has reached its end have I been able to construct the images to capture each day, attaching the progress towards a resolution of the issues my wife and I have been discussing to the subtly different landmarks of time and place.

I am reminded that life is lived going forwards, but understood looking backwards.

What we choose to remember is, to some extent, dependent on the story we tell of our own lives. This is undoubtedly even more true in following this process of remembering, where I construct an image for each day to capture the essential facts I want to keep forever: I consciously choose those facts.

Newspapers have been described as "The first draft of history".

I didn't quite understand this when first I heard it. It seemed to me that news written at the time would be superior to someone from the future looking back on events with only partial details to piece together a story. But I came to understand that history needs to be pieced together and interpreted. The news stories for a particular day may only provide glimpses of a greater picture that comes to view with a little distance.

So it is has been this week. Each day a piece of the puzzle emerged to slot together by the week's end.

Not fade away

Having images pinned to every day of my mental calendar for 2012 and 2013 is changing my perception of memory.

It is probably obvious, but memories are not captured moments of time, they are constructs.

Using my current refresh technique, I can recall all of the memory tags I use to remember the days that have passed since I began this process.

If I try to remember a day before I began this process, then generally I have no clue what I was doing on that particular day. With a bit of thought, I can work out where I was living, though as I move between my own country and my wife's even that is sometimes a challenge.

These older memories have faded not so much because of time's passing, but because I have not refreshed them. By refreshing a memory tag at least once per month, it remains with me. Perhaps as this process continues, memories will be entrenched in my long-term memory with less frequent refreshes.

Associated memories, which are triggered by these memory tags but not routinely refreshed, are another matter, of course.

The details I capture in the memory tags I expect to remain, because they are not really moments of time, they are constructs. I can remember them as well as I can remember facts, such as E=mc^2, or that Han Solo was played by Harrison Ford.

This concept is perhaps obvious, but it frees me from the idea that memories of past events will inevitably fade as time passes.

Tell me a joke

The New Year is a time for resolutions.

So I reflected on what I would like to change for the better and came up with something both concrete and achievable.

I would like to be able to tell jokes.

I have one or two memories from when I was at college and was full of jokes from recently read student union magazines and was able to fire of jokes with the best of them passing an enjoyable evening.

But that was long ago and for most of my life I have struggled to remember jokes. Except for a couple that stick in my mind.

What's orange and sounds like a parrot?
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                      A carrot.

Which then reminds me of my second joke:

What is brown and sticky? ===========================================> A stick.

It is a limited repertoire that does not add much to an evening's bonhomie.

So I have decided to use this process of remembering every day that passes to become better at remembering and telling jokes.

My aim is to bring a good joke into the images I pin to my mental calendar as memory tags every now and then.

One way to do this is by telling the joke during an event I want to remember.

So sitting at a café today with my wife I told her about the perfectionist, the stoic and the miser going into a bar (insert the national stereotypes applicable for your country). They each order a beer, but before they can drink disaster strikes as flies buzzing around some sticky buns on the bar peel off and one falls into each glass of beer.

The perfectionist takes one look at the fly, swears and pushes her beer away.

The stoic fishes out the fly and takes a swig of his beer regardless.

The miser also picks out the fly and squeezes it, shouting: "Spit it out!"

So for this day I will remember for years to come sitting in the café, the pitying look on my wife's face and the joke I told.

My hope is that with a few jokes dotted around my mental calendar, I will overcome the block I have when it comes to remembering jokes and many more will come to mind when I have a joke-telling opportunity.

I am also experimenting with adding some jokes to existing memory tags.

The image I have for 29 December 2013 involves a dog. I have a joke for kids to do with a dog: Which side of a dog has the most fur? Answer: the outside.

Now all I need is some better material!

My mental calendar

I have been asked to describe the mental calendar I used in this process of remembering every day that passes.

I do literally visualise a month-per-view calendar with the images pinned to the days of it. In fact, I see these laid out in a line of pages before the year in large flaming numbers to which they relate.

Over time, I have developed pronounced spatial awareness of this calendar and feel like I am stepping from one day to the other as I go through my daily refresh technique - for full details of that, click on the link under "About Me" as it changes over time.

Applying current refresh technique today, 6th January 2014, includes reviewing the 6th day of each month from January 2011. This is before I began this process, but I find it an interesting part of my routine to try to fill in blanks. The marked contrast between what I can remember before and after starting this process on 17 December 2011 also motivates me to continue.

I simply remember that 1st January 2011 was a Saturday and that starts me off. I feel like I'm on the penultimate day on the first line of the calendar page closest to the flaming number 2011. Step back a line on the calendar and I'm on Saturday 8th January 2011. Two steps to the left and I'm on Thursday 6th January 2011. I don't have an image for that day, so just remember where I was for New Year instead and move on. 6th February 2011 will be three days later in the following month, because January has 31 days. So I step back a month, then right onto Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I'm now standing on 6th February, first line, far right.

As 2011 wasn't a leap year, February had 28 days and so I know 6th March was the same day of the week, same position, but further from the 2011 numbers.

March has 31 days, so on the next calendar page, I move three spaces, looping back to the start of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday to 6 April.

Then a month back from the flaming 2011 and two days right, as April has 30 days, to Friday 6 May 2011. I have an image for 7 May - I was at a party that Saturday, which I remember, confirming my position on the calendar is correct.

And so on, until 6 December 2011 - another day I have a definite image for, which confirms it was a Tuseday and I haven't slipped up.

For the days since I began this process of remembering every day that passes, the image will generally come to me immediately, simply by voicing the date in my mind and the spatial awareness.

For the earlier days, there will generally be a blank, so I'll just think of something in that month I can remember.

From Tuesday 6th December 2011 it is a big step forward and a step to the right onto the calendar for 2012. I step onto the page closest to the flaiming numbers 2012, three days to the right, putting me on Friday 6 January 2012. The familiar image on that date confirms I am in the right place.

If I just pick a date at random, say 19th June 2012, and want to remember where I was and what I was doing, it may take a little time to orientate myself. I don't remember the image for that date immediately, so scan out along adjacent days. I do have a strong image pinned to 20th June 2012. The image for 19th June isn't connected to it thematically at all in this example, but the spatial connection is enough for me to remember the image.

If I have trouble remembering an image, I might have to run through the whole month to trigger the recall. If I'm doing the day-a-month review and I'm really struggling to remember an image, I'll come back later to find it. So far, this has not failed me. I've learned patience is a virtue when it comes to remembering memory tags.

As I say, I have a very strong sense of the spatial layout of the calendar, which helps me navigate it, but this is something that has developed over time. Initially, I was more picturing the calendar and sticking pins in it - now I feel like I am walking over it. I wrote a blog about this transition in perspective on 21 January 2013, when I found I could not only mentally walk around the calendar, but drop into the images to relive the moment. In fact, my memory tag for that date is writing the blog entry - I close my eyes and feel I am sitting on the sofa, with my feet up, laptop on my lap and can look around the room...

More details please

Thinking back on Thursday 2 January 2014 to when 2013 was also new, I could remember clear images that were not included in the memory tags I had chosen to pin to my mental calendar.

However, I wasn't sure whether some of these events took place on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day.

Following the same procedure of not sweating about it when I cannot recall memory tags, I decided not to worry about it. A few hours later, I found I was able to associate the events with the memory tags I had chosen.

As one of the events was going for a run, I was able to look back through the records on my phone app and confirmed that I had pieced the days together correctly.

Happy New Years

I now have two years full of memory tags: 2012 and 2013.

In my last post I explained that I have dropped the visualisation of the calendars holding my memory tags rotating away on a drum as 2014 begins. That was disorientating. It made the days seem more distant when I reviewed selected images.

So now I can step left in my mind's eye to stand on the same day in previous years. Running through the images on the same day of each month as part of my refresh technique, was as familiar as when I did this at the time.

I realised I could take this sense of remembering remembering a step further.
The blank days full of promise for 2014 reminded me that 2012 and 2013 had begun the same way.

Recalling the same days when these years were new, I tried to remember that feeling of expectation, even though each year is now filled with experiences and memories.

No more drum

I have just run into a problem with the mental calendar I use to remember every day that passes.

The calendar in my mind's eye is like a month-to-view calendar over which I walk. I have visualised the 12 sheets for 2013 laid on a drum in front of the flaming digits of the year.

With the New Year, the drum rotated. I stepped from 31 December 2013 - far from the digits of 2013 - to 1 January 2014, right below the flaming number.

As if by magic this closed off 2013 as complete.

But today I found a problem in my morning review. This involves recalling the images for two days per week over the past six months. It being Thursday 2 January 2014, I began with 2 July 2013 - a Tuesday, I recall, then 3rd and 4th July to bring me to the Thursday. From then on I recalled the images pinned to the Wednesday and Thursday of each week up to 2 December 2013, then ran through the day sequentially until I reached today.

It struck me how different the sensation was to the review I conducted on 31 December 2013. The year was done.

A little later I had some spare minutes and so decided to run through my long review, which is for a day per month, in this case the 2nd of each month.

Here's where the drum visualisation presented a problem. Walking over the days in 2011 and 2012 seemed very different, as if the drum was now fixed on 2014 and those calendar sheets were at sharply inclined angles.

I found it so disconcerting I decided to scrap the whole drum visualisation outright and have the years stretching out on a flat plane - the past to the left, the future to the right.

Now the sensation when I am walking over the calendar for past years is the same as when I first laid down the pinned the images down as memory tags. One thing I've learned is that familiarity and repetition in the review process is a great benefit.

Curiously, I initially found my mind's eye automatically saw the numbers for the past years as less luminescent. This is something I've corrected – I went every year to remain fresh.

Closing the year

As television stations and newspapers conducted their reviews of 2013, I decided to do my own.

I have images pinned to my mental calendar for every day of the year and so ran through them all sequentially from 1 January 2013.

It was straightforward - the images felt familiar from being refreshed at least once per month. More recent images are refreshed twice per week using my current refresh technique.

I had been feeling for a while that 2013 was getting old, partly because 2014 has been figuring more and more in my calendar of forthcoming events, partly because I have been filling the days of my mental calendar.

I orientate myself around my mental calendar as if I am walking over the month-to-view sheets, laid out before the digits of the year. As the year has progressed, I have moved progressively further away from the flaming 2013 I see in my mind's eye. Today the drum on which the calendar sheets sit has rotated to the left and I stand on 1 January, staring up at 2014.

All the same, there is still something fresh about the year now over: in every review during the past year, I have stepped from 2012 upto the number 2013.

That feeling will probably wear off as 2014 replaces 2013 as the new year.

My wife and I are physically in the same place where we spent last New Year, so thinking back a year during recent days reminds me of the same places and people. Both have changed over the past year, even though the months have passed one day at a time.