SQUEAK

Memory is selective. The brain, it turns out, is always editing, deciding quietly, and without our permission, what to keep and what to let go of.

I was recently sitting on an exam table in a specialist's office, having just been told I don't have my father's heart. I know what she meant, and was grateful for the news, and I also know that DNA doesn't negotiate. I have his dry wit. (Some of) his height. Whatever his heart carried, I arrived here through it. I am simply not as likely to suffer a heart attack like he did.

Unlike my dad, I've been asthmatic since childhood. The specialist asked to check my lungs before I left. I hopped up onto the table and she listened and said, "Not even a squeak."

And in an instant I was a kid again. A latent memory suddenly front and centre.

My Dad always called me Squeak.

Because that's exactly the sound I make when my lungs are in distress.

And in a moment when I needed reassurance, I got a word that belonged to him. A word wrapped in tenderness, protection, and love.

That moment released a flood of memories: nights sleeping in the back of the family car, parked outside my grandparents' lake property, just north of Bayfield, struggling to breathe because of the dust, mildew, and mould that permeated the cottage. My 6'4" dad somehow folded into the front seat of the car.

Somehow.

Even struggling to breathe, I knew I was safe with my gentle giant of a father. Always him, never my mom — he wouldn't have slept knowing that she was in the car — not that he got much sleep anyway.

Dad's been gone for 8 years now, but in that moment, he was there beside me. Right when I needed him. Just like always.

Here's what I've come to understand about why that happened.

Neuroscientists have found that a single emotionally charged moment can reach backwards and forwards in time, rescuing nearby memories — ordinary ones, fragile ones — that might otherwise have been lost. Not because of when they occurred, but because of how closely they resemble the feeling at the centre. The brain, it seems, doesn't just file by date. It files by meaning.

Which explains something I'd wondered about. I haven't forgotten my father. But I had forgotten Squeak. That specific endearment, that particular version of being cared for. It wasn't a failure of memory. Researchers now understand that forgetting is often the brain doing exactly what it's designed to do: setting aside what isn't immediately needed, to make room. The memories weren't gone. They were waiting, stored safely somewhere I couldn't reach, until the right word unlocked them.

There's also this: we tend to remember experiences that match how we're already feeling. I was vulnerable in that room. Quietly frightened, if I'm honest. Waiting to find out if my body would reveal something I didn't want to hear. Of course my father showed up. Emotionally, I was in exactly the kind of moment he always showed up for.

Memory isn't a recording. It's a reconstruction, shaped by emotion, by context, by what the heart most needs to find. I wasn't aware of looking for him that afternoon. But some part of me, some older and more instinctive part, clearly was.

He called me Squeak because he was paying attention. Because he noticed. Because that is what love does.

The memory research referenced here draws on studies from Boston University (2025), Rice University (2024), and Trinity College Dublin, as well as foundational work in psychology on emotional memory, the Peak-End Rule, and mood-congruent recall. If you want to fall down a genuinely fascinating rabbit hole, search Robert Reinhart's lab at BU. His work on emotional salience and memory consolidation is remarkable.