Does a memory become a story, or the story become the memory? It’s a question I found myself asking after telling my wife a story from my childhood. Did I really remember that event or just the story told of that event? I believe I have fragments of that memory that are genuine memory while other portions are perhaps, what I was told .

I’m certain it the same in all families, this story telling. Do you remember? That is how they almost all begin, instead of once upon a time. The problem being everyone remembers things a bit differently. I remember being teased for that event more than I remember the event itself. The story was told and retold many times.

This is something I have given thought to in the past. How much is memory and how much is just telling stories? Stories in the first-person singular that is. An autobiography of sorts. Funny name, autobiography; nothing automatic about it except folks are automatically expected to believe it.

Do we get to edit our life? We certainly do when telling our stories, at least I do. I do take creative license on occasion. Still, I have a nagging conscience at times when doing so. That happens when I remember the event and change it into a story.

But then again what is the purpose of storytelling? To entertain and inform? The moral of the story is what is of importance. That is what we are all taught. I can’t think of a single story I have told that contains a moral. I save that for my “essays” on life, on religion and on politics.

The older we get the more we edit our life stories. The reason is plain enough; there are fewer people who can dispute that story. It has become your “memory” and no one can argue with that. Strangely enough, the older we get the less likely we are to edit the story, but our memory begins to fade. As a result, we repeat the stories we were told by others about our lives. We start to believe them.

Merle Haggard wrote, ” everything does change except what we choose to recall”, a line from a song I find particularly insightful. We get to choose what we remember, not what we choose to forget. We have to rely upon the stories for that forgetting part. Then we share them as a memory. It’s a paradox.