If no one remembers it, then did it really happen?

11 Dec, 2025

A few weeks ago, I spent some time with my aunt and my mom. We were catching up and sharing stories about my grandmother and the house they grew up in. When we got on the topic of forgotten family pets, a memory I hadn't thought of in years suddenly unlocked.

"Hey mom," I said, "do you remember Mickey and Minnie? Grandmommy's dogs?"

Both my mom and my aunt looked at me in horror and started laughing. "You're joking, right?" my aunt asked. "Yeah," my mom agreed, "Mama was not good with animals. She would never own dogs on her own." They then both started interrogating me: What year was this? How old were you? Was Paw-Paw there? Were we there?

I told them I was around age four and only met the dogs twice. When I came over to my grandmother's house one day and noticed the dogs were missing, she told me a sad story about how someone had broken into the house, stole Mickey, and Minnie got sad and ran away.

My mom and my aunt burst out laughing. "Oh, she was just lying to you," they said. "You were so young, you probably just didn't realize it." But I told them I remembered seeing the dogs. They were two little white dogs who ran around my grandmother's feet. My mom and my aunt shook their heads. They just didn't believe it.

A few days later, the story came up again while I was having lunch with some other aunts. Everyone agreed that they had never heard of Mickey or Minnie or ever known my grandmother to own dogs ever. My mom started feeling sorry for me.

"Honey, I don't think it happened," she told me.

I sat at the table feeling like I was going crazy. I remembered the dogs. I remembered how they used to yip and bite at my ankles and how one was nicer than the other. I remember how devastated I was when my grandmother told me Mickey was stolen. Just thinking of a thief snatching a little innocent dog in the night and taking off with it seriously disturbed me. It's one of the reasons I've never forgotten it.

But my grandmother and my grandfather are dead, and so is my brother. There's no one left on Earth who would remember this memory except me. Which makes me wonder, as I get older, and more people around me continue to die, will the past feel somehow less real? If I'm the only person alive who remembers a memory, then did it really happen?

Because, if no one can corroborate a memory, then there really is no difference between a memory and a dream, which is a weird thought. Spiritually, it puts a lot of power in your hand because you can rewrite the past if you want to. You can tell yourself new narratives and shape your future the way you want. You could create whatever childhood you want, make up any memories you want, and if you tell yourself they're true, then they'll be true. Who's going to contradict you?

But perhaps this is just me being radically optimistic about this.¹ Despite everything, I would still prefer the validation of knowing a memory is tangible and real over this psychic, new age bullshit — the acknowledgment that my memories were not fantasies but were specific moments in time, a time that no longer exists, where I was in a specific place playing with two specific dogs with very cute names.

Or maybe everyone else is right, and the dogs never existed. Maybe I'm confused and mixing up a different memory. The frustrating part is that this will continue to happen, and I'll have to get used to it.

#family #high thoughts