This morning I watched Richard E. Grant talk about his late wife Joan. Four years gone, he said, but what his mind serves up now isn’t the frailty of her last months, but her in good health.
“The wonderful trick of memory means that we now remember her in full health rather than the last 8 months of her Life.”
And he’s right, it is a trick, but not sleight-of-hand. Psychologists have know of this bias for decades. Negative emotions tied to autobiographical memories fade quicker than positive ones. It’s called the fading affect bias. Your mind isn’t erasing facts, it’s acting like a producer in the studio, quietly turning down the volume on the anguish while letting the warmth keep playing at full volume.
Other processes chime in. Every time we recall a memory it’s rewritten, not replayed. That’s reconsolidation, and it means memories get smudged and softened, sometimes in our favour. Trauma therapists use this to their advantage, nudging one’s recall toward less damaging associations. In grief, the brain seems to do it on its own, substituting the image of the person in decline for the person as they really were. Not denial. Not repression. A form of mercy.
I’ve had a rough few years myself, different terrain, not bereavement. But I’ve clung to the old adage that time heals. It turns out that isn’t just Pollyanna sentimentality: it’s neurology. The sting dulls, the good bits endure. The mind edits.
Yet (Grant aside) scroll through the socials or (even the trad press) and you’d think the brain is a broken appliance needing constant external servicing. Talking therapies, sound baths, mindfulness apps (with subscriptions, natch). So. Much. Talking. All while PTSD headlines insist almost the opposite, that memory is a cement block dragging lives under.
Of course, trauma can lock memory in its raw, searing form. That’s the clinical exception. But for the rest of us, maybe the task isn’t endless intervention? Maybe it’s a lighter hand. Trusting that our brains are, on balance, fairly decent editors. That focussing on the good, replaying and re-storifying it, gives it more weight in the archive. I’m taking a leap here but perhaps Richard E. Grant didn’t “work through” those final months. He simply outlived their dominance.
There’s something oddly hopeful in that. Not a quick fix, not an app notification or a breathlessly titled self-help paperback, but a reminder that forgetting is not failure, it’s function. Memory is a museum curator, and sometimes the exhibition changes.
AI disclaimer: This piece was written by me, but I used ChatGPT to sub-edit, check and surface study references, and keep the tone aligned with my voice. The experiences, perspectives, and final edits are mine. AI also produced the tag list, excerpts and image that accompanies it.
John Gibbard 