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He doesn't remember much from Hell. He brought back a whole passel of nightmares, of course, horribly vivid ones, but in his waking hours the whole forty-year stretch is pretty much a blood-tinged blur. He tries not to poke at those blurry memories if he can help it, for fear they could start coming into better focus.
He does have one clear image, though, a memory so sharp and perfect that time has not dulled it in the slightest. It's a snapshot of a single, pivotal moment: He's standing in front of the rack, some poor soul strapped down and screaming in front of him. The Hellscape around him seethes with entrails and flames, a familiar and sickening sight. There's a change to the light, subtle but undeniable. Dean shifts his attention away from his victim and looks upwards for the first time in decades. There in the space above is a point of pure white light, just a speck. The words "Wish upon a star" float through his mind and for a split second he feels like a person instead of an arm that ends in a blade.
He knows now that that point of white light was his angel. Years later, Cas is still saving him, still helping him feel like a human being, every day.
Dean Winchester is saved.