The neurologist showed me four obvious spots where my mother had experienced strokes. He explained that she had small vessel disease and that it was likely the cause of her cognitive decline.

Moving my mother into her senior apartment was one of the hardest decisions I had ever made. At the same time, it was one of the easiest. Those two things existed together.

In the years my mother lived near us, life found a rhythm.

Today marks 36 years of marriage and 41 years together. When people hear those numbers, they may imagine we’ve somehow figured out the secret to a lasting marriage. They may imagine we’ve always agreed, always understood each other, or somehow avoided the struggles that come with sharing a life for more than four decades. When I think about those years, what comes to mind isn’t a secret.

One day she admitted she had gotten lost driving home from the pet store. A trip that should have taken minutes turned into nearly two hours of driving around a town she had lived in for more than thirty years.

The last thing I wanted was for my mother to see me cry. I usually tried to hide my emotions because when I was upset, she often became upset too.