So what is it that one is immediately aware of in memory if not the past?  As its name implies, the RTM answer is that one is aware of a representation of that past event.  Recall some important event in your life — your twenty-first birthday, your bar mitzvah or confirmation, your wedding, etc. You recall such events by bringing to mind images. So you picture, say, a large cake with twenty-one candles sitting on a table around which sit your parents and siblings.  You remember your twenty first birthday by recalling this image.  So as with the representational theory of perception, the RTM claims that the object of your immediate awareness in memory is a representation or image, and that it is in virtue of your now having that image that you are now able to recall the event you are remembering.