This isn’t exactly an answer to your question, but I just learned this about long-term memories, and you’ve given me an excuse to trot it out
Recent research suggests that the act of bringing a memory back up into consciousness actually involves reconstructing that memory from its previous iteration that’s been subconsciously stored. That reconstruction then replaces the previous version, and will be the basis for the next recollection.
So when we remember past incidents, we’re not always calling up the same record engraved in our brain back when the incident happened. We’re looking at the last in a long string of regenerated memories, each of which is a slightly altered copy of its predecessor.
The implication is that, contrary to what we would expect, it’s the memories that we consult the most often that are the least faithful reproductions of the actual event. Memories that have been in “cold-storage” since the incident tend to be more faithful.