Patrick Green

About

The lesson that has stayed longest is that people are far more frightened of forgetting than of remembering. Almost everybody arrives braced for the pain of recollection, and what actually keeps them awake is the fear that the details are already going. That fear deserves attention. Grieving people often start rehearsing memories deliberately, terrified of losing a voice or a particular expression, and the rehearsing is exhausting in a way nobody warns them about. We work on it directly. The details do settle rather than vanish, though almost nobody believes that until it happens to them. I have watched this particular fear surface in hundreds of hours of this work and I have never once seen someone actually lose the person. Memory is stranger and more durable than that. If you are afraid of forgetting, say so early and we will start there. The details settle rather than disappear.