“What do you want?” asked the nurse.
What did he want? He once had a house, but all he remembered was a tumble and then pain. Then he had lost it all: mobility, independence, dignity, his house. Now he was lost.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Tattered memories: My first language, now long faded. A fence, reassuringly high, around a garden where time slept. Day trips through virgin forests, gathering wild berries and mushrooms. Suddenly, columns of soldiers goose-stepping in lock-step like a well-oiled machine. A week-long Atlantic crossing. Asking where, asking why. Getting no answers.
She touched the violin’s remaining strings. They quivered in fear. After so many decades in the cupboard, they’d forgotten how to sing.
Until now, the house had surrendered few clues to Uncle’s life before he fled Budapest.
The sudden grief floored her. She hadn’t even known he used to play.
Mother Moon placed her howling baby into the calm water, a bath to sooth the tantrum.
Baby kicked with rage. The water rose up. Toy cities, filled with people, were buffeted about.
Small cars floated as roads became rivers, until the child wore itself out, falling asleep amid the ruins.
Candace Kubinec wrote this story with thoughts for Texas.
Editor: To support recovery from Hurricane Harvey, please consider donating through the Red Cross or another organization.
She loved the beach.
Yesterday I found sand in my shoes.
Today, flecks of seaweed clinging to my clothes.
Now the scent of her coconut tanning lotion traces the air.
I haven’t gone to the beach in the year since she drowned.
I wonder what she’s trying to tell me.
My heart pounding in my chest, I watched as you lay on the white linen, still and silent. The fan’s breeze fluttered your hair and eyelashes. You looked cool, reposed, as though sleeping. I squeezed your hand and whispered for you to open your eyes, once more.
But you didn’t.
Tears wanted to flow but nothing came. I wanted to cry but the guilt was too strong. In one fell swoop, my entire world crumbled before me, and I could not have done anything.
In that one moment, I understood what love and friendship meant because I had betrayed both.
This beach, with its smooth stones and jagged waves, was always your favourite, wasn’t it, Mum?
That’s why I’m standing here with you now, one last time, a small tin in my hand that I can’t bring myself to tip. But I know I’ll have no choice in the end.
She looked through her cataract cloud. Her hair, like the bathroom mirror, had silvered. Her face showed cracks like the tile. Toothbrushes… two?
Nothing looked familiar. Not the photo of children that fluttered from her purse to the cold tile floor. Not the gray-haired man who carried her to bed.
Dr. Gennit was close to a breakthrough. His devotion to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s was legendary.
He’d been caregiver for his mother, watching her steady decline and eventual death.
We thought he was just overworked until he left the lab today.
“I really can’t stay. Mother has dinner ready.”