My unforgettable moment was the Colwich rail crash. I can confirm that being in a major rail crash is an unforgettable moment, or sequence of moments. But lest I be accused of recycling old news and hackneyed experience, I didn't realize, until many years later, just how debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be.
I began to have an inkling of the effect it was having on my memory when I visited my parents for a long weekend in the early '90s, and my mother and I fell to talking about one of our postings in Germany in the late '60s, and what we used to do together as a family: weekends away, excursions to see local landmarks, and sight-seeing.
As she spoke, I realized for the first time I had no memory of any of the events which she was relating to me, as if I had not been there at all. Not only that, I had mentally cauterized the experience of the train crash from my memory, and I also had few, if any, persistent memories of my life in the years up to that conversation. It was as my life experience had become an undifferentiated soup of bland, disengaged consciousness, with no one single memory to which I might attribute any authenticity.
I was so appalled I cried to my mother for help. She said to me: my dear and precious boy, you must learn to remember every day of your life. I later discovered how PTSD can destroy memory. From my own anecdotal experience, I know this to be true. I have since met people who have been in a variety of serious crashes, and who have had a wide spectrum of memory loss due to the trauma of their experience. I have one friend in particular who is supremely sanguine about her loss, and has not a whit of interest in recovering her memory.
My mother and I talked further about strategies to enable me to recover my memories, the events - unforgettable or otherwise - which were my childhood, my teens, and my twenties before the crash, and the years since. Necessarily, those memories were filled with both pain and pleasure, and I both hurt and delighted myself in the experience.
I engaged in two activities which I believe helped. The first was to take piano lessons, which allowed me to lose myself in intensive study, and hence to become less self-absorbed by the experience of trauma. The second was to choose a day, and try to remember the events of the day itself, and of the days preceding it and following it. I am fortunate to have had a childhood with distinct phases, due to my father's soldiering and our frequent moves, which allowed me to place myself in particular places at specific dates and times, and provide anchoring points.
By this method, I have recovered several thousand days. On some specific days, I can recall the day hour by hour, and sometimes from minute to minute. The PTSD is in permanent remission. After all, the crash was over 27 years ago.
Some days contain unforgettable moments. I am glad to have recovered them.
My unforgettable moments involve my siblings.
When I was three, my parents brought my little brother home from Russia. I'll never forget how grown up I felt, holding him on my lap. We fight all the time, but I think that deep deep down we love each other.
When I was 13 I learned that I have a sister. But here's the catch - she was 18, not a baby. And no one had decided to tell me about her until I was a teenager. I felt:
-Joy because I finally could tell people I had a sister, just like I'd always wanted
-Sadness, because I know enough about the system to understand that we'd probably never meet
-Betrayal, because no one trusted me to know about her
-Curious, because I wanted to know more about her and how she fit into my life