I was out there today, you know, doing my usual… *freelance* gardening for Mrs. Henderson. Pulling up those aggressive bindweed roots – truly tenacious. And I saw my father, through their back gate, just standing in his own garden. His *own* garden. The one he meticulously designed, every rose bush hand-selected, every herb meticulously placed for its aromatics or its culinary potential. He loved that garden more than almost anything, certainly more than my mother sometimes joked. He looked utterly lost. Just… staring. At his prize-winning hydrangeas, which are blooming beautifully, I might add. He didn't even register their vibrant blue. He turned to my stepmother, who was trying to coax him inside for his midday meds, and he pointed at a patch of cosmos. "Whose garden is this?" he asked. Not "What are these flowers?" – which would be bad enough, given his botanical expertise. No, "Whose *garden* is this?" The spatial disorientation, the memory deficits… it’s classic, of course. Early-onset Alzheimer’s, they called it. Though it’s not so early anymore, not really. He's 87. It’s just… it’s here. I mean, I don't even — the humor in it, if you can call it that, is how completely, utterly, he's erased. He built that rockery himself, hauled every stone, aged his own compost. And he looks at it like a stranger’s yard. I just kept pulling at the bindweed, pretending I hadn't seen him, pretending the ache in my chest wasn't a physical thing. Because I know the next question. The *next* thing he won't recognize. And then it will be me. My face. My name. And what will I do then? What do you *do* when the person who gave you life can’t place you? My meager income, these odd jobs… I can barely afford my own rent, let alone a place with enough space for me to scream into a pillow. What do you do? I don't know. I guess I’ll find out. Eventually. Soon.