He had been to my house, often likes to come here, stay for a few days,
because of the nature where he can walk along overgrown tracks and
see how life used to be lived before. Now he could not find my house and
called me, told me the name of the cafe where he had stopped.
After a meal he went for his walk, but didn't return and it was getting dark.
We found him under an olive tree, he was lost, nothing he knew before
resembled the forest of dread he was in now. It took a while before he knew
me and when he did he cried, the game was up he was slowly succumbing to
Alzheimer's. In the morning, I drove him back to the town, my wife was driving in
his car behind us. He spoke little and when he did, mixed the past and present.
When we stopped outside his house, he thought I was Dalai Lama, was flattered
to be in my presence; we arranged for him to go into a home, but before it could
be done, he had a lucid moment and cut his life short, as he refused to follow
the lane of the living death, a ghost that had no memories.
