My Year With Proust - Day 355

   But never should I be a be able to eradicate from my memory that contraction of her face, that anguish of her heart, or rather of mine; for as the dead exist only in us, it is ourselves that we strike without respite when we persist in recalling the blows that we have dealt them.  I clung to this pain, cruel as it was, with all my strength, for I realised that it was the effect of the memory I had of my grandmother, the proof that this memory was indeed present within me.  I felt that I did not really remember her except through pain, and I longed for the nails that riveted her to my consciousness to be driven yet deeper.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 786

Building upon yesterday's reading (and setting up tomorrow's - and the next day's, this is Remembrance of Things Past, after all), Proust continues to reflect upon the memory of his grandmother, and especially the pain that he brought her.  He could have tried to shift to thoughts of happier times but he did not.  Rather, "I clung to this pain, cruel as it was, with all my strength, for I realised that it was the effect of the memory I had of my grandmother, the proof that this memory was indeed present within me."  Since memory is stamped by emotion it's not particularly surprising that Proust, or any of us for that matter, remember the painful events so clearly.  I think happy moments, or at least the vast majority of happy moments, are quieter moments, and thus not as emotionally-charged, so they are not imprinted on our memory as clearly, whereas painful moments are sharper, more discordant, and thus more likely to be locked away in our memory virtually intact.  Still, Marcel doesn't shy away from them because he feels that they are all he has, and he has to cherish every memory of his grandmother, even the painful ones, because "the dead exist only in us."