What you are not sure of

You have been in the chair since lunch, and for a good part of it you have been trying to settle something that will not settle.

It might be whether it was before or after the funeral. Whatever it is, the whole of what it was turns on which, and it will not come down on one side.

Some of what you carry is not like this at all. You know what you did, and when, and to whom, and there is nothing uncertain about any of it.

This chapter is about the rest, and there is no ranking here between the two.

There is the one you cannot place. You know the room it happened in and you cannot get the year within five, and you are no longer sure whether you said it out loud or only got as far as thinking it — a difference that would change everything, and exactly the part that has gone.

There is the one with two versions. In the afternoon it is the smaller one, and at four in the morning it is the other. You do not know which of them is the memory.

There is the version your family tell. Somebody says do you remember when at a table, and it is about you, and it is not something you can find anywhere. Sometimes what they tell is kinder than what you think happened and you let it stand, which costs you something you could not name. Sometimes it is worse, and you let that stand too, because contradicting it means making a scene in the middle of somebody's Sunday, about yourself.

There is the one you can feel has moved. You can tell it is not the version you had before. It has got smoother, and you do not trust smooth, and there is no way back to whatever the first one was.

And there is the one with nothing attached to it. A settled sense of having done something, with no event under it at all — no year, no room, no name. It arrived first and has been looking for something to belong to ever since, and some nights it finds a candidate and some nights it does not.

And there is the question of who is left to ask.

For some of it there is nobody. Everyone who was in the room is dead and there is no second account of that afternoon anywhere.

For some of it there is somebody — a cousin, a brother-in-law, whoever else was at the back — and you have never asked them, and that is its own weight and not a lighter one. There may also be a date on a stone, or an order of service in a drawer, or a certificate that settles it in four seconds.

Nothing here says any of that is closed. If it can be asked, it can be asked.

One thing is worth putting plainly, early, before the book goes anywhere near what you actually did.

Nothing in this book depends on you producing an accurate account of your life.

Not a date, not a sequence, not a reliable version of anything. And the reason is not generosity. Putting a thing right would need the date — you cannot go back and fix what you cannot locate. Putting it down is the other act, and it has never needed anybody's co-operation, your own memory's included.

You still do not know whether it was before or after.

If names have started going that did not used to go, or you lose the thread of a conversation you are in the middle of, or somebody in the family has said something to you about it, that goes to a doctor, sooner rather than later. Some of what takes a memory can be treated: the thyroid, the blood, an infection, low mood, your hearing, and several of the tablets. It gets missed because everybody assumes it is the age. It is worth the appointment even if you are fairly sure what the answer will be. The same for sleep that has gone, and pain you have been living around.