Remember

You have been with me for the best years of my life, and I cannot thank you enough. That is why this is so hard on me. Watching you suffer like this is unbearable. I know I am being selfish though, I know that this whole thing is much harder on you than it is on me. It’s just that I can’t deal with the times you can’t remember my name.

I know we promised that we would never keep secrets from each other, but I don’t know how to tell you these things. I don’t know how to say that loving you now is one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I try desperately to be brave for you. I don’t want to make it any harder than it has to be. But I am weak. It hurts me terribly when you don’t recognize my face.

I still cherish the good days; the days we spend together laughing and reminiscing. I just wish we had more of them left. You have been getting worse and those good days are happening less and less. I know there will be a point where they won’t exist anymore. And that kills me. It tears me up because I know that when those days no longer exist, I won’t either. At least not to you. By then, you won’t even know who I am.

Every morning I think about how you will be that day. I wonder if you will be the happy and free person I married, or the angry, confused person that you have slowly become. Not knowing is the worst. I hate not knowing how to act or what to say. I hate that I can’t take this away from you. I hate that I feel resentment toward you for being ill. I hate this life. And sometimes, I hate you.

The best part of my day, though, is watching you sleep. Despite the agony of not knowing how you will be, I can at least pretend that everything is okay. I can just look at you and believe that everything is fine. I want to believe it, I really do. I really try to believe that everything will be okay. I know better though. Even watching you sleep now, I hope that you will wake up and the suffering will be over. But it won’t be. It never will be.

I can’t do this anymore. God, I love you so much, but I can’t do this anymore. Your suffering, my resentment, the consistent slide toward the inevitable; I can’t handle it anymore. I don’t want our last years on Earth together to be spent like this. I don’t want my last years with you wondering if you still know who I am. I won’t spend them that way. Please forgive me for this, because I can’t forgive myself. But I need to do this, to stop your suffering. Wait…you’re waking up, and you’re smiling! “Good morning Charles,” you said! You don’t know how happy it makes me when you say my name. Maybe this is a sign. No, I know it is a sign, a sign for me to go through with this. A sign that I should end the suffering while you still know who I am…