I said my goodbyes long ago when he started losing the memories of our forty years together. Every week another chunk of our life disappeared and I began to wonder if events had really happened at all. Now, I am the stranger lost in a past that doesn't exist. Every Thursday I visit the nursing home and plead with him to talk to me.

Today the smell is stronger in his room, earthy, dirty. I have a premonition that his body will soon join up with his mind. Scrawny shoulders crunch his wasted frame into a spongy ball. Already his fingers and toes are twilight grey. Swiveling in sunken sockets, the bare bulbs of his eyes stare nowhere and dried blood sticks to the gauze noose around his neck.

"Hi Harold. It's Marge."

I look away to hide my disappointment at his silence, a foolish gesture since he never notices. I've given up telling him I love him to avoid the guilt of being a liar. My emotions are too hard for me to understand.

The veins in his arms are big as worms as he rattles the bedrails trying to yank free of the cloth handcuffs. He tries to rise up, but his head falls back. I see the tear slide across his cheek and into his ear. His translucent eyelids close.

Just maybe, even for a moment, he remembered me.