A Memoir of No Memory: Rethinking Self Analysis and Navigating Medical Narratives

Faculty Research Day 2018: Faculty Competitive Poster WinnerMy sabbatical project explores the themes of health, wellness, identity, and creative voice. In a series of essays, I am investigating and writing about life events—both traumatic and ordinary—and their effects on memory, personal psychology, and the choices I make as a writer. The first of these essays describes and analyzes an illness I endured in 1992. I spent over three months in a "prolonged coma," and an additional six months in rehabilitation. This research project brought me back into that world of hospitals, tests, diagnoses, and jargon. Having no concrete recollection of those summer months, I began with one central question: How can I write a memoir about something I can’t remember? My explorations became the focus of The Comet's Tail: A Memoir of No Memory (Homebound Publications, 2018). The challenges of subjectivity forced me to question my duty as a memoirist and whether impartiality is ever really possible. I had to piece together three threads—journal entries written before I got sick, medical notes transcribed at the time, and emerging memories after the event. Examining these various accounts forced me to confront new questions of perspective and documentation. How much was true record and how much was inaccurate recollection of witnesses or imaginative invention? How is memory formed, and what is the role of trauma in our ability to reconstruct and understand the past