When the Days Drift

I gather you walking down the hall,

your hands reaching for doors that have moved.

I gather your voice calling names that do not belong to me,

and I answer, I answer.

I gather the stories you tell twice, thrice, a hundred times,

and I do not tire.

I gather your eyes when they shine for a second,

and I see the life that remains.

I gather your steps as they falter across the floor,

I gather your laughter and your silence alike.

I gather the mornings when you wake

and do not know the day.

I gather the evenings when you sleep

and dream in fragments.

I gather your music, your hands, your face,

and carry them forward.

I gather all that the disease cannot steal,

I gather the pulse of you.

I gather because to gather is to fight the forgetting,

to honor the living.

I gather and hold you as the hours pass

and names vanish.

I gather and I proclaim your life here,

even as the disease erases you.

I gather, and in the gathering, you remain.

I gather, and I sing your presence

across the rooms of memory.

I gather, because Alzheimer’s

takes what it will,

and still, I hold you whole.

Author’s Note: November is Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month. This poem is written in loving remembrance of my grandmother, who bravely faced this devastating disease for nearly fifteen years.