[July 2006 journal entry]
In the first telling of an experience, a person begins to engage in reconstructing the past experience (e.g., how a woman remembers childbirth after one hour, one day, one week, one month, one year, . . .). My experience with my first wife’s illness so deeply marked me that forgetting or reconstructing the experience away was not an option after her death (d. 1987). Instead, her experience remains for me a symbol of so many other tragic/humiliated sufferers then and now.
In the first telling of an experience, a person begins to engage in reconstructing the past experience (e.g., how a woman remembers childbirth after one hour, one day, one week, one month, one year, . . .). My experience with my first wife’s illness so deeply marked me that forgetting or reconstructing the experience away was not an option after her death (d. 1987). Instead, her experience remains for me a symbol of so many other tragic/humiliated sufferers then and now.
