It's bits and pieces, Lilty. I'll interact with something - a song, a scent, turning my head and seeing a pattern of leaves leaving shadows on a wall as I walk by, a conversation about something - and something will trigger, and I'll stop right where I am and pick at the fragment, teasing it out, trying to remember all of it. The midlife complication comes because I can't trust some of it. How much of this is real? The core memory, certainly. But what am I remembering accurately?
Sometimes I can ask. I remembered two gigs in December 1975, but I mixed one with the other; luckily, I have three friends who were at both. One was at Winterland, so they came backstage with us and of course they all three remember the evening, and all their memories agree with mine. But as an example, there are things I'd forgotten that they all remember: me giving Rex Jackson (one of the Grateful Dead roadies, a man I cordially loathed, present because the gigs were the Jerry Garcia Band) hell, because he was power-tripping, refusing to let said friends backstage, doing the "they aren't on the guest list" deal. I'd forgotten that, but when Marlene (the friend) reminded me, I also remembered the rest: that N had come out and snapped at Rex and told him to back the hell off, these were friends and family. And Marlene didn't remember that, but Dee did, the entire conversation.
None of this is easy. But writing about it - it's my only way of letting this particular lion out of the cage.