Imprints linger on the rust-colored rug—parallel lines from the rocker that accompanied Dad to assisted living in November, and a circle where Mom’s swivel-recliner used to sit. That perfect ring still marks the spot where Dad found her, after she fell and whacked her head on an old exercise bike. Somehow, she made her way back to that chair and rested her injured head on its soft cushion. A bloodstain bloomed on its mottled fabric—a shadow that remained, even after she died.

I want to gather memories from before Mom’s accident and Dad’s Alzheimer’s, pump blood into those recollections, breathe life into
the past. Then, I would fling the animated images into this wood- paneled den, so I could undo Mom’s death, dismiss Dad’s forgetfulness, ignore any signs of their aging. Instead, my task is to lift pictures from the walls, sift through my parents’ drawers, and remove all physical reminders of Mom and Dad’s forty-seven years in this red-brick house.

While I stand with my arms limp, my dog, Herbie, presses his nose against the back door and his panting fogs the glass. Although the interior of my parents’ home withers, an urban ecosystem thrives in their backyard—birds pecking at dwindling feeders, squirrels competing for the droppings, and bunnies nibbling at the lawn. That’s where Herbie wants to inject his chaos. I slide the door open, and he bounds across the lawn.

It’s June in Denver, and outside the perfume of lilacs blends with the essence of pine. I slip off my shoes and follow Herbie, allow my feet to imprint on soft grass. A single silver maple stands in the backyard, its three siblings cut down over the years as they succumbed to age and disease and rot. As a child, I’d climb those trees. I loved feeling their flow as I neared the top and the wind blew me to and fro. Now, at fifty-two, I run my hand along the lone maple’s peeling trunk, admire its strength, height, longevity. Closing my eyes, I press fingers against fraying bark, to sear its memory into my psyche.

While the door to my parents’ old house is decorative—paneled wood with etched glass—Dad’s assisted living door is solid, with just a tiny peephole. The room number is permanent, but since the occupants are temporary, clear plastic holds my dad’s nameplate—easy to replace when he departs. I knock, wait, then hear Dad’s two canes clicking, alternating with the thud of uneven steps. Blue eyes peer over bifocals as Dad opens the door and smiles. “Well, hello there.”

I reach to embrace him and cling to our remaining connection, before Alzheimer’s steals what’s left of his memories.

Though Dad’s mind is increasingly chaotic, his appearance is tidy, his horseshoe of gray hair short, neatly combed. A white t-shirt pokes from the top of his collared button-down, both tucked into jeans, which are cinched with a belt. His pocket protector holds two pens and small pieces of paper, so he can write notes that he won’t remember to check.

Dad’s given me so much—my life, my education, my integrity. In return, all I do is take—his car, his house, his independence. Yet he doesn’t dwell or seem resentful. Instead, when I chauffeur him around, he’s a cheerful charge, the epitome of the mindfulness movement, living in the present as his memories fade.

At the doctor’s office, Dad pulls a worn wallet from his pocket. I point as he stares at once-familiar cards. “That one with the picture is your ID, Dad. And the blue one’s your insurance.” He hands them to the receptionist, and she makes eye contact with me, instead of him. When we’re called to the exam room, I accompany Dad, respond to questions about his medication, his daily routines. Except we’re at the urologist today, and I don’t have all the answers.

“Any pain during urination?” the nurse asks.

I’ve learned a lot about Dad’s personal habits, but this area of his life remains private.

“Nope,” he says.

But Dad is an unreliable witness to his own life these days, and I’m unsure about the accuracy of his answers.

“Any recent health changes?” the doctor inquires.
“Nope,” Dad answers, his face serene.
“Well,” I say, “there was a hospitalization in January, two broken ribs, a bump on his head.” Still adjusting to his new apartment, Dad had misjudged the location of his bed following a three-a.m. trip to the bathroom and tumbled down, scraping the bedframe’s side rail with his chest, bouncing his head on the floor.

Dad looks at me, his brows creased. “Was that this year?” He turns to the doctor and shrugs. “I’m a fast healer.”

I pat Dad’s shoulder. “Yup, almost back to your old self.” Then I press rough fingernails into the flesh of my palms, to relieve the pain of Dad’s condition.

Six years ago, I walked into a pet store that smelled of rawhides and urine, ready, or so I thought, to foster a dog.

As I approached the rescue coordinator, a wiry spaniel-mix leapt into her arms, and she extended him toward me. “Here, take this one.”

Herbie raised his face to mine, and his whole body wiggled. I squeezed him, rubbed his brindle fur, and inhaled his earthy scent. The coordinator gave me Herbie’s leash, a kennel, and a bag of food. We were free to go. I got a cart anyway and started perusing the aisles.

“I see a failed foster,” one of the volunteers said as she watched me scanning the shelves.

“No,” I replied. “I’ll take good care of him.”

She laughed. “I’m sure you will, but you’re already investing in the toys of his future.” I looked at the faux fox, stuffed hedgehog, and rubber Kongs piled in my cart. “My bet is that you’ll fail at fostering and adopt him instead.”

At home Herbie chased his new balls and chewed on the frayed end of a tug-of-war rope. Then he returned to where I sat on the floor and rolled over so I could rub his white belly. When he settled into his new pet bed, the gentle hum of his snoring spread warm sensations through me—filling my head, tingling my fingers.

On Monday morning, I placed Herbie in his crate, and his small body trembled. “I’m sorry,” I told him as I turned away. This was the reason I’d hesitated to adopt—I didn’t want to leave a dog alone all day. Why did I think fostering would be any different? When I walked out the door, Herbie barked and howled as if some sadist were tearing the fur from his paws with tweezers. I waited on the stairs, hoping he would calm down. When I finally drove away, the image of his pleading face lingered in my mind—forehead crinkling, ears back, all eighteen pounds of him shivering.

The next morning, I dropped Herbie at doggie daycare before heading to work. But my tight budget wouldn’t allow that to become a daily habit. I gripped the steering wheel, my palms cramping as I drove away.

Every time I leave Dad at his apartment, two hands grab my ribcage and pull in opposite directions. One hand belongs to my husband, muscular and strong, and it entices me back to my own home; the other hand, wrinkled and weak, tugs from a place of lifelong love and now, responsibility. My emotional ecosystem quakes, a creature I don’t recognize howls, and roots tangle beneath me. I sense a storm
on the horizon, so I return to a familiar refuge, a place that, in the past, symbolized warmth and security. 1972. I’m five years old and we’ve just moved into a red-brick house. Pink shag carpet covers the floor of my childhood bedroom, and Mom and Dad sleep down the hall.

Time rushes forward. For a short time at least, I can still return to that sanctuary. White shutters frame windows and doors, like sideways eyelashes on an old, familiar soul. There, I find the father I used to know. He’s on the hard drive of an old Gateway computer, his resume outlining his accomplishments—the year he graduated from Harvard Medical School, his time in private practice, pages of publications and presentations.

Updated photos hang in Mom’s otherwise unchanged 1970s kitchen. My brother and I are still present, but my niece and two nephews have been added to the scene—Dad holding each grandbaby over his shoulder, patting their small backs; Mom leaning over them as toddlers, pressing angels into dough; Dad, without Mom, embracing me at my wedding.

I want to preserve each image, etch my emotions into these walls. Instead, I must erase it all, strip that brick house of our memories.

Canes click, Dad opens the door, and I wrap my arms around his solidness. I hand him what’s left of his mail—a few magazines and a copy of his bank statement. I’ve already paid his bills. We’ve flip-flopped roles, me the parent to his regressing child, the chasm ever widening.

I drive Dad to the neurologist. The examiner lists a series of numbers, asks Dad to repeat them.

Silently, I test myself.

Dad responds immediately, perfectly. He does most of the math she gives him in his head. Only one error.

I cheer internally, like I would if he were in grade school. A triumph! Except this accomplishment, given Dad’s résumé, is not particularly impressive.

The examiner utters a string of unrelated words, asks Dad to say them back.

“Apple, violin, Mr. Johnson, charity, tunnel,” he says. They repeat the string several times, trying to cement the words in the quicksand of Dad’s mind.

I attempt to store them in my own brain, concerned about possible genetic connections.

The woman asks Dad more questions. He’s not sure, but he thinks the president is named “Nightingale.” He doesn’t know the year, doesn’t quite get his address correct. His shoulders slump and he turns to me. I usually fill in when he’s unable to remember, yet I can’t assist him, not this time, helpless myself as I witness his increasing confusion.

A few minutes pass, more questions from the examiner. Then she asks about the words. “How many can you remember?”

Mentally, I repeat the list, uncertain if I’ve recalled the second correctly, fidgeting with my hands, picking my cuticles, rubbing my tongue against the small space between my front teeth.

Dad pauses, shakes his head. “I don’t remember.”
Zero.
Despite his stellar immediate recall, the math he can still perform in his head, he’s scored a zero on that item. Dr. Nightingale is Dad’s neurologist. He’ll preside over the results of this test, tell me Dad should no longer make his own medical decisions, manage his own finances. I’ve already stolen those bits of autonomy from Dad, yet he runs his fingers through thinning hair. “Why can’t I pay my own bills?”

Five minutes after we leave, Dad won’t remember being there; the cleft between him and his former self expanding.

“Bring him here, to the office,” my boss says, when I share my doggie dilemma. So Herbie joins me at work, greets my colleagues with tail wags, and curls onto a mat next to my desk.

Relief ripples through me when I sign the adoption papers, and we become a failed foster pair. But separation anxiety isn’t our only challenge. I soon discover that Herbie suffers from a suite of issues.

“These problems are rooted in emotion,” my vet says. I tilt my head as she recommends working with a specialist.

I take Herbie to a middle-aged, heavily-accented German behaviorist with a small pack that she uses as conspirators in her training regime. She invites us into a sunroom that smells like wet dog. The floor is littered with squeaky balls and chew toys. Herbie makes himself at home, picking up a bone, settling into a pet bed. The trainer nods, comments on how quickly he’s acclimated to the new environment. Then she lets her biggest dog into the yard. As soon as Herbie sees him through the glass, he goes from calm to Cujo.

“Oh!” the trainer says. “Too much.” She calls the big dog back into her house, places him in an unseen room, and allows Herbie access to the yard. He sniffs and searches and investigates. Then she releases one of her older dogs. This one is slow, geriatric. With no glass between them, Herbie approaches until he can smell her butt. Then he wags his tail.

“When a barrier prevents dogs from interacting in a natural manner, they get frustrated,” the trainer explains. “Tricky. We must desensitize him before we can teach a healthier adaptation.”

I search online, discover doggie behavior modification techniques—I must expose Herbie to anxiety-provoking stimulus from a distance, provide positive reinforcement, then gradually inch forward. So I take Herbie to a local park, and we sit on a knoll overlooking an amphitheater. As dogs arrive on the stage for a “Canine Good Citizen” class, I prepare treats. When Herbie spots the first student, he tenses. Before he panics, I place a treat in front of his nose and he’s distracted— treat, treat, treat in rapid succession. Herbie relaxes as he focuses on his rewards. I run my hand along his back, try to smooth wild fur. “Yes. Good boy.” We never actually participate in the class, but each week we sit closer, practicing our own routine.

As long as I can control the situation, Herbie and I make incremental progress.

With Dad, I can’t control anything, especially the distance between us. It grows steadily as I try to unlearn emotions, adapt to new roles.

Dad and I go to lunch and he tells stories from his youth. He can’t remember yesterday, but he recalls kicking a football over his uncle’s barn, his mother tossing him into the pigpen when he was a toddler. Yet he’s starting to forget the people in his current life; he has trouble telling his two grandsons apart. Unlearning emotional attachments he used to hold dear.

He’s right there, yet unreachable. I want to grab his shoulders and shake, break through this strange barrier separating me from the Dad in his filing cabinets, his photo albums, the plaques and diplomas on the walls of his old house. I want to throw my whole body against the growing partition between us that makes everything seem so unnatural; me, the keeper of his memories now. I run my tongue over the inside of my teeth, where no one can see the ritual of my anxiety.

“I’ve been thinking about your mother lately,” Dad says.

I perk up, hoping for something new. But the back-and-forth rhythm of conversation has disappeared and the spectrum of stories he can tell is shrinking and repetitive. Vague images are all he has left of Mom, and even those bits are sloughing away. I picture his brain, tight folds of gray matter. Then, an upended pencil, its rubber tip scrubbing.

My own thoughts repeat and swirl—Mom and Dad on an infinite loop. Her head injury was obvious and acute, while his neurological illness is subtle and slow. If her head had merely bounced off the floor, like Dad’s did when he fell, Mom would have healed just as quickly—a fall barely worth mentioning at the urologist’s office. Instead, a metal corner of that damned bike carved a hole in her skull, allowing blood to rush into her brain, erasing speech and sound and memories and life. If not for that tragic accident, Mom and Dad would still be living in their shared home. Mom would be taking Dad to appointments, managing their finances, cooking meals in her bright orange kitchen. They would both still sit in the den as nighttime loomed, lamps spotlighting them as darkness seeped into wood paneling.

But Mom is gone, and now, each time I visit Dad, I wonder how much of him will be left and what will have dissolved.

The house Mom and Dad once shared is constricting too—only three more cabinets to sort through, the pantry where Mom’s aprons still hang, the bottom drawer of Dad’s desk, the closet in the basement where the Christmas decorations are stored.

I miss you, Mom. See you later, Dad. Increase the distance, unlearn the emotions. Goodbye house.

When I return to my own home, the entire laundry room smells like dog breath—hot and humid and sour. Herbie’s eyes are wide, his panting frantic as he jumps on me, whines. Eventually, Herbie settles, sits politely so I can scratch his floppy ears. Then he lies on the hardwood floor and licks his paws repetitively. He doesn’t lick while I’m away. He waits until the stressful situation is resolved and we’re together again before he self-soothes.

Fixating on the texture and landscape of the space behind my teeth is a new obsession, mostly invisible to others. Picking at my cuticles is a longer-term habit. My husband tries to stop me by grabbing my hand. But my brain persists, unwilling to let the dangling strip of skin go. I smile, wait until he releases me, then resume picking.

I’ve tried to convince Herbie that my absence is no big deal. I walk in and out of rooms, go out the front door, return before his anxiety escalates, practicing the techniques trainers and vets and websites have taught me. Still, I haven’t been perfect. I’m not supposed to leave Herbie alone for extended periods. Not until he’s been successfully desensitized and counter-conditioned. Or he could backslide.

Guilt rumbles through my nervous system. Not good enough. Now, every time Herbie and I separate, I’m the one who panics.

I stand at Dad’s door, knock, listen for his canes. How will I react when Dad no longer smiles with recognition as he opens that brown door, tucks in his own shirt, says my name. Will I pick at my fingers? Slide my tongue along the inside of my teeth? Or will a new body part express that particular stress?

Adjust the distance, decondition, revise emotional responses—even if it takes months, years, a lifetime to relearn. My parents’ old house is quiet now; I should be calm. But as I turn the lock, walk into an increasingly empty interior, my chest tightens.

I take a stack of Dad’s slides, hold each one to the light. I see Mom, on a trip to Africa, holding and swinging the arms of children. But Dad has taken the shot from behind, and Mom is walking away.

Something inside me ruptures and I rise, wander to the hallway where my grandparents’ portraits used to hang. I run my fingertips along textured wallpaper, smell lingering spice in the cabinets of Mom’s kitchen, watch squirrels and bunnies and birds continuing their lives in the backyard.

No!
I must forget these familiar walls, adapt to this new phase of life.

My inner child climbs a silver maple, wraps her arms around its narrowing trunk, holds on tight. The landscape below changes as the wind picks up and the yard blurs. I loosen my grip and tumble backwards, hoping nothing will shatter as I fall.

Visit Dad, pack his old house, return to my own home—a spiral that tightens as it narrows. Once the house is empty, my daughterly duty is done, and I pull the door shut behind me. The latch clicks, the lock engages, and a vacant place inside me aches.

Rationally, I understand that my next task will be to learn to live with this void, even as I continue to care for a declining Dad. Nonetheless, I wrestle with the inhumanity of these goodbyes. How can I erase a foundational landscape and detach from irreplaceable relationships without losing myself?

Back at home, I collapse on the couch, and Herbie flops next to me. Outside, the atmosphere shifts. A storm rolls over the mountains. Rain mixes with hail, battering the roof and pinging the deck. When I stand, Herbie stiffens. As I walk away, he follows, his small body shivering beside me. In general, Herbie has adapted. Mostly, he’s calmer. But thunder is one of his persistent fears.

I pick him up and place him at the foot of the bed, where a smattering of brindle fur and an indent on the comforter mark his favorite spot. Curling myself around him, I rest a hand on Herbie’s back. The Rorschach pattern of his coat morphs into fading pink carpet, a shuttered brick house. Canes click, my teeth grind, and outside the window, streaks of light shatter a dark sky.

Herbie lifts his head and I tense, too. We’re in this one together— unsure which direction the storm will take.

Herbie nudges my arm and I rub the divot between his ears that always looks like worry. “It’s okay,” I tell him as a surge of wind rattles the house. “Not all emotions can be trained away.”