Describe a family member
My mother is ninety-one. Her memory drifts now, and her balance is unsteady. She no longer knows what day it is, or where she is. She knows that my father sleeps at home, but she can no longer remember where that home is.
She lives in a nursing home now, where she is well cared for and deeply loved. When we visit, my father is always there — he arrives at the start of each day and stays until late afternoon. He never misses a day. She doesn’t remember who has visited, but he keeps a diary as a record for her and for us. Every day he brings photo albums, turning the pages slowly, pointing out names and places. He has begun to annotate the photographs, both as a gift to the family and as a way of remembering.
She once wrote, about ten years ago, in her life story:
“Married life is never easy, when we made that commitment we probably didn’t realise some of the pitfalls ahead, but we just worked hard together, one supporting the other when needed…. As we get older you realise how wonderful it is to have made that commitment and experienced the happy times together and weathered some of the harder times. Having the support of family certainly makes life easier.”
Those words have become our family’s inheritance — not money or possessions, but a way of seeing the world. Hard work. Enduring love. The quiet courage of commitment.
When I visit, she looks up and smiles. She may not know the place or the time, but she always knows when Dad is near. And in that small certainty, everything she ever believed about love still holds true.
The Afterword 
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