What memories remain are rounded and smooth

[GoodTaste]

I felt the encroaching noise and cold as the tender pulling away of something essential—something like oxygen, or shelter, or the glow of some warmth that had held us until now. Perhaps this feeling came from deep inside me, from something in the death of a baby in its mother's arms that depletes the hormones and begins to cancel the synchrony that should have bound mother and baby for months to come.
I remember very little of the hours that followed. What memories remain are rounded and smooth and still as stones. By now I know them well. They are so worn with recollection that all their shape and roughness is long rubbed off, and only the most dense and silent parts remain.

Source: The Lancet

Does "rounded" mean "simplified/not detailed"? Or does it mean "Shaped into the form of a circle or sphere"?
On second thought with "By now I know them well" there, I guess "rounded" here might mean "complete". I am not sure, because the author also said "They are so worn with recollection that all their shape and roughness is long rubbed off" - they are contradictory.

 

[probus]

I felt the encroaching noise and cold as the tender pulling away of something essential—something like oxygen, or shelter, or the glow of some warmth that had held us until now. Perhaps this feeling came from deep inside me, from something in the death of a baby in its mother's arms that depletes the hormones and begins to cancel the synchrony that should have bound mother and baby for months to come.
I remember very little of the hours that followed. What memories remain are rounded and smooth and still as stones. By now I know them well. They are so worn with recollection that all their shape and roughness is long rubbed off, and only the most dense and silent parts remain.

Source: The Lancet

Does "rounded" mean "simplified/not detailed"? Or does it mean "Shaped into the form of a circle or sphere"?
On second thought with "By now I know them well" there, I guess "rounded" here might mean "complete". I am not sure, because the author also said "They are so worn with recollection that all their shape and roughness is long rubbed off" - they are contradictory.

It is a metaphor based on the fact that the incessant tumbling of pebbles in streams or the surf causes them to be worn into smooth rounded shapes. I don't see any contradiction.

 

[emsr2d2]

You need to read "rounded and smooth and still as stones" as one phrase. That's what leads to the meaning probus explained well above.

 

[GoodTaste]

Does "tender" (in "the tender pulling away...") mean"gentle" there?

 

[probus]

Yes.

 

[Tarheel]

I didn't know before that memories can be round and smooth.

 

[Tdol]

Have you not thought of trying to put yourself into her shoes?