When Harold and I were first married, he used to leave love notes everywhere.
Slipped into coffee filters.
Tucked into the glove box.
Taped under the lid of the laundry detergent like tiny treasures waiting to be found.
“Just in case you forget how loved you are,” he’d say with a wink.
Now the roles are reversed—I’m the one reminding him.
It started with the small things.
Lost keys. Missed appointments.
Pauses in the middle of stories like a page had been torn from his memory mid-sentence.
And then one day, in the middle of dinner, he looked at me with gentle confusion and asked,
“Wait… what’s your name again?”
He said it like he was ashamed to ask.
Like my name was a word stuck on the tip of his tongue behind a door he couldn’t unlock.
I didn’t cry. I just kissed his cheek and told him again.
“It’s me, love. I’m still right here.”
Since then, each day feels like a gentle tug-of-war between memory and instinct.
He knows I belong to him—he just can’t always place how.
Sometimes I’m “the nice lady.”
Sometimes I’m “the peach blouse” or “the one with the scarf.”
But always, always… he smiles when he sees me coming.
And then there’s the bench.
The one in our backyard beneath the oak trees.
He calls it “the waiting place.”
No one ever told him to name it that.
He just started one day—shuffling out around sunset, Windy Oaks cap on his head, sitting quietly, staring at the horizon like something sacred was about to unfold.
I asked him once,
“What are you waiting for out here?”
He didn’t turn to me.
Just kept looking out into the gold-tinged sky, and said,
“She always comes around now. The woman with the kind eyes.”
That’s who I am to him now.
Not a name.
Not a title.
But a feeling. A presence. A memory that won’t quite let go, even as the rest of them fade.
And somehow, that’s enough.
Because while my name might be lost to him…
his love for me isn’t.