The wet Marshall heat slobbered my skin like an unwelcome dog’s tongue. I sat with my grandfather in the bare-walled living room of my grandparents’ senior living community, Oakwood House. My significant other, who’s now my wife, was outside making a phone call. Meanwhile, my grandmother slept away the afternoon in the bedroom. Her breathing was deep and loud for such a small woman—she was barely 5 feet tall in tennis shoes. I wondered if she still dreamed.
Dementia brings with it a darkness and terror so personal that the afflicted becomes a kind of prisoner in a cave—a faint, muddled echo of their former self. My grandmother was already an echo by then. Whenever I tried to start a conversation and she responded, “You sound like yourself,” I knew how gone she was because she no longer said my name. “Gordy,” which sounded like “Gawdy” in her southern Louisiana accent, had slipped from her mind. And Marshall, an East Texas home I idealized even if it wasn’t my own, was slipping from my life, too.
If people can become ghosts, so can places. I was trying to hold onto both as I sat in the living room while my grandfather made staccato conversation—“You doing good in Missouri? Teaching all right?” I wanted to preserve the moments and the spaces before all that forgetfulness and loss, and outside of the conflicts that families inevitably carry. It would take me years to understand how letting go was the only way forward, but for now I refused.
When my future wife returned from her phone call, my grandfather stood up. The stretched-out neck of his white T-shirt exposed his weight loss, and his nylon workout pants were two sizes too big. “Let’s you and
