I Will Never Forget You

You don’t know where you are. You’re in a stranger’s room, in a stranger’s bed, wearing a stranger’s pajamas.

Your heartbeat accelerates in response to the unfamiliarity. You stare around the room, searching for an explanation. “Room” is probably too generous a term. This is really more of a closet with a bed jammed inside. The walls are too close, the ceiling barely high enough to stand. The bed is built into the floor and the walls. Everything is wood.

Two and two crash together, suddenly, reliably, equaling four: you are on a boat. You can feel the room swaying gently beneath you. Not a room—a cabin. Yes, you can see the ocean through that tiny window over the headboard. And you can hear the water sloshing against the walls. You’re at sea.

But how did you get here?

Clumsily, you wallow yourself off the bed. It’s no easy feat. Your body seems absurdly weak. Why is your back so sore?

On strangely unsteady legs, you stand. There’s a suitcase in the built-in shelf along the wall. It’s your suitcase. You tied that garish orange shoelace around the handle so you could tell it apart from all the other black suitcases in the world. Carefully, you lift the suitcase’s lid. The clothes inside aren’t familiar, and they’re packed strangely, like a protective cocoon around an unfamiliar wooden box.

You cautiously lift the small box from your suitcase. It’s roughly the size of your dictionary at home. You test the lid, but the box is locked. Who put this in your suitcase? Lee?

You nearly drop the box in panic. Where is Lee?

You hurriedly stuff the wooden box back into your suitcase. You must find Lee. You shuffle across the small cabin and reach for the door. Your hand freezes. A small canvas bag is hanging from the door handle.

Cautiously, you remove the bag and peer inside. It contains a small black notebook. You withdraw the notebook and scrutinize it. The cover is well-worn, secured by an elastic band on one side. There is a hard lump in the center of the notebook. Something about this book is familiar, but…

Lee. You must find Lee.

You slip the notebook back into its bag. Your hand trembles slightly as you pull open the cabin door. On the other side is a narrow corridor. You creep along it, passing several closed doors. You consider opening them, but decide against it. Who knows what might be inside.

At the end of the corridor, a set of stairs ascend to a closed hatch. The staircase is so steep it might as well be a ladder. You’re getting too old for this.

Clutching the canvas bag in one hand, you grip the staircase railing in the other. One step at a time, you clamber to the top, unlock the hatch, and push it open.

You blink against the blinding daylight. A bright, cloudless sky fills the stairwell. Warm air smells of salt and sun. Voices drift on the breeze. You strain your ears, but the words are unintelligible. They’re not speaking English. It’s Spanish, no—

Italian?

But you don’t speak Italian, do you?

Cautiously, you climb the remaining stairs. At the top, you find yourself on the deck of a small cabin cruiser. A sparkling vista of blue ocean stretches to the horizon before you. It is breathtaking in its singular beauty. You always wanted to sail. Always wanted to—

The Italian voices break across your thoughts. You look sideways to see a crooked line of boats following a shoreline. A few boats away, a pair of men are preparing to set sail. They wave to you, say something in Italian. You wave back, then turn slowly toward the shore.

Your breath catches in your throat. You know this place. You’ve never been here, but you recognize it: the brilliant rainbow of pastel houses climbing the hillside, the domed church at the top. This is Procida, Italy, off the coast of Naples. Years ago, you and Lee saw a picture of this picturesque stretch of coastline in a magazine. You always talked about saving some money, coming here and sailing the Phlegraean Islands for your anniversary. Is it possible that you finally did it?

And where is Lee? And how did you get here? Whose boat is this?

You think hard. You strain to pull down the most recent memories. Last night? The day before? Last week?

Nothing. You have no recollection of how you got here. But you’re here, which means Lee can’t be far away.

The notebook.

You’d almost forgotten the bag in your hand. Perhaps Lee went to buy breakfast and left a note in the notebook. That’s why it was hanging on the door handle, to make sure you would find it.

You smile a little as you lower yourself into a seat on deck. You’re feeling marginally better now that you’ve started to solve the mystery. You pull out the notebook and set the bag aside. Fingers trembling slightly, you slip off the elastic band holding the notebook’s cover shut. You open to the first page. You read the words written there.

A chill washes down your body, followed quickly by disbelief, then denial. This can’t be right. There is some mistake. You can’t…

But the words are written in your handwriting. It’s unmistakable. It must be true.

“My name is Terry Reading. Today, I have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In this notebook, I will record the things that are too important to forget.”

Alzheimer’s.

The word hits like a death sentence. Worse than that—it’s an agonizing, drawn-out death sentence. It is the loss of mind, and self, and dignity. It’s bad enough that age must take your body. Now Alzheimer’s will take the rest.

You want to disbelieve the words. With every cell of your body, you try to disbelieve them. But you can’t. Your handwriting stares back at you, assuring their authenticity. So, this is why you can’t remember. After all these years, you’ve finally made your way to Italy, and you can’t remember any of it. What else have you forgotten? Birthdays? Anniversaries? Grandchildren? How old are you? What year is it?

Panic surges around you. You hastily flip the pages of the notebook. Months fly by, then years. You stop at a page with a photograph of a newborn baby. You have a new granddaughter. Her name is Elsie. Born to your son Paul. Wait, Paul is married?

You retrace the pages until you find another photograph: Paul in a tuxedo, standing beside a pretty girl you’ve never met. According to your notes, her name is Rebecca.

You close your eyes. This can’t be real. If Paul was married, you would know. You would have met his wife. He’s not old enough to be married, is he? He was just graduating high school.

You open your eyes and flip back to the first page. The names of your children are listed in the center of the page. All three of them are married now. You have five grandchildren.

Anxiety is quickly overwhelming you. If this is real, if you truly have Alzheimer’s, you know nothing. You flip through the notebook toward the end. You must find out why you’re in Italy, how you got here. You stop at another picture. You and Lee. Your 45th anniversary.

45th Anniversary? Is that possible? Could you really be 69 years old? Is that why your back hurts? Is that why your muscles are so weak?

You begin reading from your 45th Anniversary. Another grandchild, this time your daughter’s son. The old Chevy Lumina finally died. They closed your bank. Paul got a new job.

You turn the page. Your heart plummets from the first sentence. All at once, you know. You know what happened. You know why you are here. You don’t remember, but you know, somehow, instinctively.

You read the final few pages through tears. You read about the cancer, the fight, the predictable conclusion.

You buried Lee on a Tuesday. It rained.

Your head bows in grief. After half a century of marriage, you are alone. The world is suddenly quiet, empty, cold. How many times have you relived this moment? How many times has Lee died? How many times will you have to do this again?

Minutes, maybe hours, pass before you look up. You read the last page of your handwriting. After paying off the medical bills and funeral expenses, you were left with $20,000 from Lee’s life insurance. With that money, you have come to Italy to honor Lee’s final wishes: to take the trip you could never afford to take together. To rent a boat and sail the Phlegraean Islands. To scatter Lee’s ashes in the Mediterranean.

A small sound nearby startles you. You look up to see a man emerging from below deck. It’s one of your children. Not Paul, the other son. Why can’t you remember his name? You just read it…

He stops suddenly when he sees you. His eyes flick over the notebook in your hands.

“You already read, didn’t you?” he asks.

You nod. He crosses the small deck, sits, and gives you a hug.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I should have been up earlier. I’ll go wake Paul and Mary. We’ll get breakfast and talk.”

“Paul and Mary are here?” you ask.

“We’re all here,” he confirms.

He rises and disappears back down the stairwell. You flip back to the first page of the notebook. Andrew. Of course. How could you forget his name?

You release a long sigh. At least your children are here with you. That’s probably something you should have written down. You turn to the back of the notebook, intending to do so. The notebook’s ribbon bookmark lies across the next empty page. Tied to the end of the ribbon is a small silver key—the lump you felt earlier. Though there isn’t a note, you know what it unlocks.

You spend the day sailing the Mediterranean with your children. You speak of Lee. You tell stories from years ago that they’ve never heard. They tell stories from last year that you’ve never heard. You laugh, and cry, and remember.

It is late in the afternoon when you finally find the perfect stretch of Mediterranean. Nobody says it, but you all know: this is the place. You clamber down the stairs into the cabin where you awoke, so confused, this morning. You retrieve the small wooden box from your suitcase and carry it carefully up the stairs. The key from the notebook fits the lock perfectly. You carefully lift the lid. Inside rest the ashes of your beloved, departed Lee.

You carry the box to the side of the boat. The waves bob around you, reflecting the sun as it plunges toward the sea. The world falls silent. Your children each place a hand on the box. Gently, lovingly, you tip the box over the sparkling blue water. The ashes catch on the breeze. As they swirl away, you whisper loud enough for only Lee to hear.

“I will never forget you.”