I n the weeks after someone dies, memory often behaves strange- ly. It does not roam freely through a life. It circles a single point.
to the ending, as if that moment contains some answer. Grief, at first, is not expansive. It narrows. Many people quietly fear this narrowing will last forever. That their loved one will slowly be- come synonymous with how they died, rather than how they lived. That the illness or tragedy will eclipse the relationship itself. Psychologists say this ear- ly fixation is not a failure of remembrance. It is how
the brain processes shock.
Grief researchers have long ob- served that emotionally intense experiences are encoded more powerfully than everyday life. The mind gravitates toward the moment of rupture—the point where reality changed. Early grief often organizes itself around the loss event itself before gradually expanding to include the broad- er narrative of the relationship.
The hospital room. The accident. The phone call.
The moment the world split into before and after. Even when a person lived fully— with habits and humor and con- tradictions and years of shared life—the mind keeps returning
But when memory stays there too
Candlelight Magazine
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