Forgotten Silhouettes

Every dawn, I brought coffee to your hospital bedside,
Our quiet walks beneath the whispering trees outside.
Those mornings, filled with hopes whispered and fears unsaid,
In that sanctum, our vows of love we gently thread.

But the eve before they journeyed into the depths of your mind,
Kathleen's fury cast a shadow, cruel and unkind.
I left to keep peace, your bewildered eyes haunting my retreat,
A foreboding silence wrapping us in a shroud so discreet.

April the twenty-sixth, the surgeons carved away the night,
You awoke with a smile, a heart so light.
Yet fate’s cruel twist, my illness kept me afar,
In Kathleen’s hands, your journey took a different star.

The home you left now echoes with the ghosts of your touch,
Loki and Willie search for you, missing you so much.
Silence where laughter should fill the void,
The vibrant life we shared, now null and void.

In desperation, I tried to lure your voice back home,
Paused your cards, stopped your phone,
Yet when you called, your voice was distant, cold,
A stranger’s tone, reserved, controlled.

The doctor insists, “She’s fine,” living without a past,
Venturing through life as if our love didn’t last.
Kathleen paints you a picture of years without me,
A past resurrected, from which you don't flee.

You speak of our home, our life, like scenes from someone else’s dream,
Our shared love, our whispered nights, now a distant stream.
The realization pierces deeper than the surgeon’s knife,
You have moved on, absent from our woven life.

Here, in the quiet aftermath, Loki, Willie, and I stand,
In a house that no longer feels like home, a life unplanned.
I swallow the tears for the sake of our furrowed brows,
In the shadow of loss, I must uphold my vows.

The tragedy of dementia, of a mind that steals away,
Leaves more than just the forgotten; it reshapes the day.
A wife lost not to fate but to a labyrinthine mind,
Leaves a husband and two cats, fractured remnants left behind.

Your silhouette fades at the edge of my desperate sight,
A figure once so vivid, now slipping into the night.
This grief is a quiet thing, heavy and profound,
A heart once filled with love, now an echoing sound.