She wished she had cancer instead. She'd trade Alzheimer's for cancer in a heartbeat. She felt ashamed for wishing this, and it was certainly a pointless bargaining, but she permitted herself the fantasy anyway. With cancer, she'd have something to fight. There was surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. There was the chance that she could win. Her family and the community at Harvard would rally behind her battle and consider it noble. And even if it defeated her in the end, she'd be able to look them knowingly in the eye and say good-bye before she left.

Accepting the fact that she did indeed have Alzheimer's, that she could only bank on two unacceptably effective drugs available to treat it, and that she couldn't trade any of this in for some other, curable disease, what did she want? Assuming the in vitro procedure worked, she wanted to live to hold Anna's baby and know it was her grandchild. She wanted to see Lydia act in something she was proud of. She wanted to see Tom fall in love. She wanted one more sabbatical year with John. She wanted to read every book she could before she could no longer read.She laughed a little, surprised at what she'd just revealed about herself. Nowhere in that list was anything about linguistics, teaching, or Harvard. She ate her last bite of cone. She wanted more sunny, seventy-degree days and ice-cream cones.

Her ability to use language, that thing that most separates humans from animals, was leaving her, and she was feeling less and less human as it departed. She's said a tearful good-bye to okay some time ago.

Caregiving often calls us to lean into love we didn't know possible.

It was October in Pennsylvania and on the first morning the ground was frosted. As I walked to breakfast, some guy yelled out, ‘Thirteen inches in the Poconos.’‘Is that I porn film?’ I asked.

In the heart or every caregiver is a knowing that we are all connected. As I do for you, I do for me.