ALREADY GONE

We did not notice at first— the small rebellions of memory: a forgotten kettle on the stove, the absurd claim that Tuesday had vanished, names reshuffled as if in a deck too often played. The mind does not fall—it recedes, a shoreline eroded not by storms but by silent, persistent tides. Each day an abrasive grain, each night a hush over once-luminous thought. She remained seated by the window, watching nothing as the garden bloomed out of season, declaring spring to be a tired lie. Doctors spoke in dulcet certainties: "progressive," "degenerative," "inevitable," their syllables clothed in clinical precision. And so began the vigil— of sons who now became strangers, of a husband revisiting courtship rituals to jog the stubborn past loose, of caregivers who measured each hour by the frequency of wandering and repetition. Her body persisted beyond her as if mocking the soul’s departure; and we, too faithful to abandon, held up dignity like a paper shield in the long war with forgetting. The disease was punctual— as if following an invisible itinerary— it reached the final station where even pain seemed exhausted, and death, when it arrived, was not unwelcome— but late.