Memories fade surprisingly quickly. I’m 20 years old and I’m already having trouble. I feel I’ve forgotten so much of my life already. How do I make myself remember?

We’d like to think we’ll be able to remember the important things — the triumphs, the pitfalls, the people who made a difference. We try to share exciting experiences and meet new people, in the hope that having these memories will help them stick. We expect to be able to hold on to these recollections, at least until old age robs us of our treasures.

In the last few years of my grandfather’s life, he started to forget. At first it was the small things — where he’d placed his keys, what he had gone to the shops to buy. Next came the life events that simply vanished from his memory. He struggled to grasp onto the strands of a story, frustrated when the holes in his memory engulfed his desire to tell me about his life. And then he forgot who I was, looking to my grandmother confused, when I walked into the room.

“This is Alison, Li-Ying’s daughter,” she said.

“Who’s Li-Ying?”

My grandfather lived in China, and I visited him only six times in my life. He helped to raise me when I was a baby, while my immigrant parents worked full-time jobs and night shifts to live up to their Australian dream. While I was growing up, my mother would tell me about the man who shaped her life, who now lived an ocean apart from us.

Writing a diary

I have forgotten those stories, and lost my memories with him. The man is slipping away from me and my memories, a man who is part of my blood and who I desperately want to remember. How do I make myself remember?

I’ve started to write a diary. I try to battle my inner laziness and make a point to write down my thoughts or activities each day. I’m paranoid. I’m writing down the wrong things, engraining feelings that presently might feel important, but aren’t quite the memories that I would reach out for when I’m older.

When people ask me of my first memory, I tell them I was in Kindergarten and it was hailing one day. There was thunder and lightning and shrieks from frightened children. Our teacher was supervising us, while we sheltered in our classroom, unable to go outside and run around that day. Some ice droplets fell through the window, and my five year-old self picked up a cube and ate it.

I would like to think that this is a real memory of mine. To be honest, I’m not really sure. I’m worried this is a false memory, a distortion of a fragment I dreamt or saw in a movie, that I’ve transplanted into my own life. Perhaps I’ve reminisced so much, and the more I tell a story, the more it is unintentionally revised. So am I remembering this story because it actually happened? Or am I recalling a version influenced by imagination and bias? Did it ever even occur in the first place?

We humans have always been able to manipulate our own memories. It’s why the same event can be remembered radically differently by two friends. I’m aware that the recollections stored in my brain could be false, tampered by nostalgia or bias. I’m also aware that many of my recollections are of events that never occurred.

But perhaps, if I’m very lucky, some of my memories might actually be real.

Alison Xiao is an intern at Gulf News.