I still remember the dinners my daughter would refuse as a child, those battles of will I usually won (or thought I did). Now she sits there, staring at the pot roast I made, the same blank look my wife had in those final years. The dysphoria, I suppose, is a different animal when it's your own child exhibiting it, a kind of inverse reflection—a dementia-induced apathy mirrored in her caregiver's exhaustion. We both just sat there, the silence punctuated only by the refrigerator hum, another casualty of the long war waged against time and decay. I wish I could tell her something, anything useful, but what wisdom does a man have when he knows the fight is ultimately lost, even before it truly begins?