As daylight faded in the one-room schoolhouse, a good-sized crowd gathered for a concert that included old friends, Tim and Ethan.
Ethan sang songs I loved, and not the sentimental ode to his baby son that made me ache with a pure sweetness I will never know.
Tim performed alone, while Leanne, his decades-long partner, sat smiling distantly, mildly, in the front row. At intermission, she told Tim she’d like to go home. She was tired, she said. Tim and Leanne had been tag-team story tellers of rollicking folk tales, rich in magical monsters, princesses, and mustache-twirling villains. In tandem, counterpoint narrative, they roared and whispered and filled a room with centuries of epic plots and sly schemes.
But inexorably, dementia was fading Leanne—like color too long in the sun. Early on, Tim would gently prompt her and deftly incorporate the missed cue into the act, but inexorably, her memory failed along with the core of who she was.
They used to come to Thanksgiving dinner when I stretched mismatched tables to accommodate twenty or so friends, and we ate ourselves past endurance. Then, before the glorious ordeal of multiple desserts, we’d turn off the lights and bring out the candles. Tim and Leanne would tell us tales. Their demons growled in accompaniment to our bloated bellies and, worn out as I was, it was the best part of the day.