There was a moment of panic, as if a hole had opened in the world and swallowed something precious. I looked at the photo and there was an empty place in memory where the voice should be. You would think I would be used to it by now, but I never am. It is a real grief to me that I cannot fix voices in memory in the way that I can faces and places. The things I remember most vividly and easily are visual and tactile … but although I can replay a piece of music in my head note perfect, even hearing the singer’s voice, some of the people I have most cherished in my life I can no longer ‘hear’.

Don’t misunderstand me, I can remember any voice when I hear it, either in reality or in the mind; but to deliberately call up the sound of that voice is a different matter. Some I can; they are, for some unknown reason etched in memory; friends I have not seen in years, family members whose voices are forever stilled still speak in the mind. Some voices I cannot call up, no matter how I try and there seems neither rhyme nor reason to whose… it is often the dearest I cannot ‘hear’. I can almost taste a voice in imagination, I can feel it… sometimes it comes unbidden and is simply there, yet if I try to reach for it, to listen to it, pitch and timbre, laughter and word will simply vanish.

A lot of research has been done on how the brain is wired for these things, but I’ve never really come across an answer as to why some people can and others cannot dredge these memories up from the basement levels of the mind where they seem to be buried… and why some voices remain spontaneously and others are simply a void when you reach for them. I can only surmise that some of us are wired for sound, and others predominantly for visuals, yet that only answers half the questions at best. Not that it matters, of course, when you are reaching for the unattainable sound of a much loved tone and cannot find it.

For that split second of grief at an unexpected loss, as I gazed at the picture, I was conscious that I had a glimpse of what it must be like to lose memories, through age, illness or injury. Yet the photo was of someone I see often, it didn’t matter after all, or it shouldn’t. For goodness sake, I only have to pick up the phone… I even have a recording… yet, for that split second I can only say I felt utterly bereft.

Which, under the circumstances, sounds a tad melodramatic even to me, but emotions have a knack of doing pretty much whatever they want.

Thankfully these things are never utterly lost. I think we just misplace them in the vast storage facility of the mind. The things that have made our memories… all the tiny details that have, for whatever reason, impressed themselves upon our consciousness, all the things that matter to us… seem to be housed in the dusty, cobweb filled recesses somewhere. We may not be able to recall them voluntarily… we may not know in which filing cabinet in the archives to look … but the memories may be triggered by some subliminal stimulus and return unbidden when least expected. Perhaps, sometimes, we simply try to hard… like looking for a lost set of keys in a hurry and finding them in your pocket after all.

And, bizarrely, as I type, that ‘lost’ voice comes to mind, and with the inner ear that familiar, much loved voice gently mocks my fears.