I am eating breakfast.
I am eating breakfast seventeen years ago.
I am eating breakfast with my wife who is alive and my wife who is dead and my wife who is young again, sitting right there across from me, young and old and middle-aged, all three versions layered like transparencies.
“Nessin? Are you with me?”
Which version is asking? The young one has that worried crinkle between her eyebrows. The old one is patient, tired, accepting. The middle-aged one is frustrated, scared, trying not to show it.
I pick up my spoon. Put it down. Pick it up again.
“I’m here,” I say.
But where is here?
The kitchen is our first apartment and our current apartment and the house we lived in for three cycles in the middle. All at once. The window shows morning and evening and a storm that happened twenty years ago. Rain and sun and snow, simultaneously.
“Eat your porridge,” she says. They say. All three of them, the words slightly out of sync.
I eat my porridge.
It tastes like porridge and like the fish stew we had last night and like the honey cakes from our wedding and like nothing at all.
—-
The doctors explained it to me once.
Or maybe they’re explaining it now. Time is difficult.
“Your mind has lost temporal coherence,” says the young doctor with the clipboard. “You’re experiencing multiple cycles simultaneously.”
“Can you fix it?”
“No.”
He’s older now. Same doctor? Different doctor? His face keeps shifting.
“The deterioration is too advanced. If you’d advanced earlier…”
“We couldn’t afford it.”
“I know.” He writes something. Has written something. Will write something. “I’m sorry.”
I’m in the examination room. I’m in my bedroom. I’m sitting on a bench in the market square, watching children play.
Wait. When am I watching children play?
My daughter runs past. She’s seven. She’s also thirty-two and standing next to my bed, crying.
“Papa? Papa, can you hear me?”
“You were just playing,” I say. “Just now. With the ball.”
“That was twenty-five years ago.”
“Was it?”
It feels like now. Everything feels like now.
—-
Here is what they don’t tell you about deterioration:
You don’t lose your memories. You keep all of them. Every single one.
The problem is you can’t file them anymore. Can’t sort them into “past” and “present” and “future.” They just… exist. All at once. Equally real. Equally present.
I remember my wedding day. It’s happening right now.
She’s walking toward me in the white dress. Young. Beautiful. Crying with joy.
She’s also dying. Six years ago. Cancer ate her from the inside. I held her hand as she went.
She’s also making breakfast. This morning. The morning that might be now.
All three happen simultaneously.
I feel the joy and the grief and the mundane comfort all at once.
It’s too much. It’s always too much.
—-
“Nessin.”
Someone is shaking me.
I’m in bed. I’m at work. I’m standing in a field I don’t recognize.
“Nessin, you need to eat.”
My daughter. The thirty-two-year-old version. Holding a bowl of something.
“I already ate.”
“That was yesterday.”
“Are you sure?”
She hesitates. She’s never sure anymore.
“Just try to eat something, Papa.”
I take the bowl. It’s soup. Or stew. Or porridge. Hard to tell when all meals taste like all other meals.
“Where’s your mother?” I ask.
My daughter’s face does something complicated.
“She died, Papa. Six years ago.”
“Did she?” I look around. There she is, in the kitchen doorway. Middle-aged version. Healthy. Whole.
“She’s right there,” I say.
My daughter starts crying.
—-
The worst part isn’t the confusion.
The worst part is the moments of clarity.
They come without warning. Suddenly the layers separate. Suddenly I know exactly when I am. Where I am. Who I’m talking to.
And I realize how far I’ve fallen.
I’m in a care facility. My daughter visits twice a week. She’s exhausted, stretched thin between caring for me and her own family.
My wife is dead. Has been dead for six years.
I’m sixty-eight years old, but I’ve been sixty-two for eighteen cycles. Over a hundred years of memories compressed into a mind that can’t hold them.
I know all of this, clearly, for about five minutes.
Then the layers collapse again, and I’m eating breakfast with my wife who is alive and dead and young again.
The clarity is worse because I remember what I’m losing.
The confusion is better because I don’t have to face it.
—-
“Do you know who I am?”
My daughter. Sitting beside my bed. Holding my hand.
I look at her face. It shifts. Seven years old. Fourteen. Twenty-five. Thirty-two.
“You’re my daughter.”
She breathes out. Relief.
“Do you know my name?”
I know her name. I’ve known her name for thirty-two years of her life, but I’ve experienced those years eighteen times over.
The name is there. Somewhere. Under layers of other names, other faces, other moments.
“Linnea,” I say.
She smiles.
“That’s right, Papa.”
Except I’m not sure it’s right. Linnea was my sister’s name. Or my mother’s. Or a woman I worked with forty years ago.
But my daughter is smiling, so maybe I got it right.
Hard to tell.
—-
Night is the worst.
During the day, there’s stimulation. Voices. Movement. Things to anchor me to the present.
At night, there’s just darkness.
And in darkness, all cycles are the same.
I lie in bed and experience every night of my life simultaneously.
The night I met my wife. The night she died. The night my daughter was born. The night my father passed. Countless ordinary nights of sleep and dreams and waking.
All at once.
I close my eyes and open them and close them and the darkness shifts but never changes.
Am I asleep or awake?
Both. Neither.
Time doesn’t mean anything anymore.
—-
“We could try the experimental treatment,” the doctor says.
Old doctor. Young doctor. Same doctor at different ages talking about the same thing at different times.
“What would it do?”
“Potentially restore some temporal coherence. Help your mind distinguish between cycles.”
“And the risks?”
“You could lose everything. Complete memory collapse. You’d be… empty.”
Empty.
I think about what that means.
No more layers. No more simultaneous moments. No more wife alive and dead at once.
Just nothing.
“No,” I say. “I’d rather drown than be empty.”
—-
My wife visits me.
She’s dead. I know she’s dead. I was at her funeral. I remember the casket, the flowers, the way the dirt sounded hitting the lid.
But she’s here now. Sitting in the chair by my bed. Knitting something green.
“You always did work too hard,” she says.
“I’m retired.”
“Are you?” She smiles. “I remember when you worked at the mill. Came home exhausted every night.”
“That was forty years ago.”
“Was it?” She looks up from her knitting. “It feels like yesterday.”
“Everything feels like yesterday.”
“I know, love.” She reaches over, takes my hand. Her fingers are warm. Real.
“You’re dead,” I say.
“Yes.”
“But you’re here.”
“Yes.”
I don’t understand. But I’ve stopped trying to understand.
“I miss you,” I say.
“I know. I miss you too.”
“How can you miss me? You’re right here.”
She squeezes my hand.
“I’m a memory, Nessin. I’m not really here. You know that.”
I do know that. And I don’t.
“Stay anyway,” I say.
“Always.”
She keeps knitting. Green scarf. Or blue. Or red. Hard to tell when all colors exist at once.
I fall asleep holding a dead woman’s hand.
Or I wake up.
Or I’ve been awake the whole time.
—-
My daughter brings her children to visit.
Two of them. Or three. Or one. The number keeps changing.
“Say hello to Grandpa,” she tells them.
“Hello, Grandpa.”
Their voices overlap. Young and old and in-between. Versions of them I’ve met and versions I haven’t.
“Hello,” I say.
One of them climbs onto my bed. Small. Warm. Real.
“Grandpa, tell us a story.”
I have a thousand stories. A million. Every story I’ve ever heard or told, all at once.
“Once upon a time,” I start.
The words blur. I’m telling them about my wedding. About the war I fought in as a young man. About a fish I caught when I was seven.
“Grandpa, that doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.”
“Try again.”
So I try again. And again. The stories tangle together, threads from different cycles weaving into something new.
The children listen anyway.
Maybe they understand. Maybe they’re just being kind.
Either way, they stay until I fall asleep.
—-
Here is what I want you to know:
I’m still here.
Under all the layers. Under all the confusion. Under the simultaneous moments and overlapping faces and endless breakfast.
I’m still here.
I can’t reach you most of the time. Can’t communicate clearly. Can’t tell you which version of you I’m seeing or which moment I’m experiencing.
But I’m here.
And I remember loving you.
All of you. Every version. Every moment.
That’s the one thing the deterioration can’t take.
I might not know what day it is. Might not know if you’re alive or dead or both. Might not remember your name.
But I know I love you.
That stays. That always stays.
Even when everything else drowns.
—-
The doctor is young again.
Or old. Hard to tell.
“How are you feeling today, Nessin?”
“I don’t know what day it is.”
“That’s okay. You don’t need to know.”
“I don’t know what year it is.”
“That’s okay too.”
“I don’t know if my wife is dead.”
He pauses. Writes something.
“She died six years ago.”
“Oh.” I let that settle. It doesn’t stay settled. “She was just here.”
“Memory, Nessin. You’re experiencing memories as present reality.”
“Is that bad?”
He considers.
“It depends. Does it frighten you?”
“Sometimes.” I think about it. “But sometimes she holds my hand. And even though she’s just a memory, it feels real. It feels warm.”
“Then maybe it’s not all bad.”
“Maybe.”
—-
Night again.
Or day.
I’m lying in bed. Or sitting in a chair. Or standing in a field.
My wife is here. Dead version, alive version, all versions.
My daughter is here. Child, adult, middle-aged.
My grandchildren are here. However many there are.
The doctor is here. Young, old, in-between.
Everyone I’ve ever loved, all at once, surrounding me.
“We’re here, Papa.”
“We love you, Nessin.”
“Rest now, Grandpa.”
I close my eyes.
Everything is happening at once.
And somehow, that’s okay.
Because in the chaos, in the overlapping layers, in the endless simultaneous moments…
There’s love.
There’s always love.
Even at the end.
Especially at the end.
—-
I am dying.
I have died.
I will die.
All at once.
The darkness is warm.
My wife is holding my hand.
“Come on, love,” she says. “Time to rest.”
“What time is it?”
“All the times.”
“Where am I?”
“Everywhere. Nowhere.” She smiles. “Home.”
I close my eyes.
Open them.
Close them.
The layers finally settle.
The voices finally quiet.
And I am…
for the first time in decades…
still.
