Imperfection Is Not Invalidation

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

A recollection is, first and foremost, someone's story. That a memory may be imperfect does not invalidate the one who holds it, and denial by another does not disprove the event. On the Spencer revelations, and on why a recalled truth deserves more than a rebuttal.

A Book That Unsettles

The current serialisation, in the Daily Mail, of the 9^th Earl Spencer Charles Spencer's book "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister" is yielding quite interesting revelations about Diana, Princess of Wales, who died in 1997, and it has left the Royal Family reeling.

At the heart of the matter lies a phone conversation between the then Prince Charles and Charles Spencer. In the book, the earl recalls words the prince spoke to him in the days after Diana's death, to the effect of, "Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough."

In response, the Palace has released a statement: "While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss."

Why Fabricate?

When I first heard this response, I did wonder why the earl would choose to fabricate such a statement and attribute it to the prince who is now Charles III. I am a supporter of the monarchy as an institution; at the same time, I appreciate that it is peopled by humans, just as you and I are, with all the vicissitudes of humanity in frailty, attitude, behaviour and conduct.

The conversation took place on the phone between two men who were, it seems, affected to differing degrees by the death of Princess Diana. The eulogy the earl gave at her funeral suggested there were issues between the Spencers and the Royal Family; I still remember the applause that rippled from the crowds outside into the church. I commend him for using that platform the way he did, even if a stuffy cohort felt it was improper.

Words That Stay

In my view, many conversations take place around us, and usually there is something within them that simply sticks; you never forget it. You hear it in your head, in the very voice in which it was spoken to you. For me, a medical professor stood by my hospital bed, after a cancer diagnosis, in September 2009, and one thing I remember him saying, amongst other things, was, "You probably have five weeks."

If I met that professor today and recounted that conversation, there is a likelihood I could be told that, in my pain, my reason had been clouded, affecting my judgement and thereby colouring my memory. Yet those words I heard clearly. Whether another might agree they were spoken is another matter entirely, and it does not invalidate my story.

The Survivor's Truth

This is not an abstract concern for me. I recognise the shape of this dispute, because I have watched the same manoeuvre used against me, where a memory is met not with denial of the facts, but with doubt cast on the one who remembers. I understand this better than I would wish to.

The same goes for other memories I recall vividly, whether it be child sexual abuse or serious emotional abuse, along with utterly reprehensible and unbelievable acts of cruelty meted out to me by people to whom I was a ward. I have heard denials, perhaps out of forgetfulness, or out of an inability to face the consequences of their actions, once committed in private, now brought to light. My experience and my story will not be erased by their blanking the event as though it never happened.

Any book I hope eventually to write as an autobiography will contain explosive revelations, and many of the nuggets already exist, scattered across almost twenty-three years of my blogs. The memories, even those from childhood, still play back like reels of film, each movement or sound relaying in emphatic slow motion, unmistakable cranial celluloid. I know what I lived through, how I felt at the time, and how some of it has affected me today.

When Memory Is Named

In the same vein, I am wont to believe Earl Spencer's recall of that phone conversation. A survivor does not owe you a convincing story; they can only tell you what they know. Whether you believe them, in the end, is entirely left to you.

Too often, a memory is renamed grief, pain, loss, misfortune or spite, or any other unfortunate experience that can be used to neatly dismiss it, or to cast doubt on its veracity. A memory may be imperfect, since we rarely have a recording to replay, but imperfection should never be mistaken for invalidation.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog