WHEN MEMORY BECOMES A STRANGER

 

(A poem for World Alzheimer's Day)

There comes a quiet kind of forgetting

that does not ask permission.

It enters through little doors—

a name misplaced,

a familiar road suddenly unfamiliar,

a question asked twice

before the first answer has settled.

At first,

we laugh gently.

We say,

"You are getting old."

We find the missing keys

and place them in waiting hands,

never imagining

that one day

the keys will not be the thing that is lost.

Then slowly,

the house begins to change.

Photographs remain on the walls,

but the faces inside them

become difficult to name.

Yesterday folds into today.

Today slips quietly toward somewhere

we cannot follow.

And there is a particular sorrow

in being remembered

only in pieces.

A daughter becomes

the kind woman who visits.

A husband becomes

a familiar stranger.

A childhood home becomes

a room with beautiful curtains

and no history.

Still,

love does not always require memory.

Sometimes it is found

in the hand that reaches back

when yours reaches first.

In the smile that arrives

without knowing why.

In the calm that settles

when a familiar voice

sits beside the bed.

Perhaps this is what we forget—

that a person is still a person

when memories begin to disappear.

They are not an empty room.

They are not only their diagnosis.

They are every morning

they once welcomed,

every person they once loved,

every meal they prepared,

every story they told,

every life they quietly shaped.

So be patient

with the question asked again.

Sit beside them

when the words become tangled.

Tell the old stories

even when you are unsure

whether they remember.

Play the song.

Hold the hand.

Stay a little longer.

Because there are some things

the mind may lose

that the heart somehow keeps.

And if one day

my name becomes a stranger

on your lips,

I hope you will not measure

our love by what you remember.

Measure it by the years

we had.

By the laughter.

By the ordinary mornings.

By the hands

that once held each other

without needing a reason.

And when memory

can no longer find the way home,

may love

remain there waiting.