In Savannah, Mom asked if she was dying. My heart soured with sadness.

“We are all dying, Mom,” I answered.

“No, did the doctor tell you that I’m dying?”

“No Mom. The doctor did not say that.”

This disease forces you to face the truth, yet fabrications become necessary.

“But why then,” she went on, “for some reason, does it feel like it’s all coming to an end?”

I miss my mom everyday, and I’m sad when I find myself speaking of her in past tense. I acknowledge that she’s still here, and wonder if the part of her that I know and love has really grown so small, that it’s hardly decipherable. The parts I knew and love only come to me in dreams now, like warm wind, forceful, through the cold, the way it dances through trees just before a storm.

And just as I was about to publish this post, my phone dings: a text from E.

Did you see this? he texted, and the blue letters of a link glow. The link takes me to an article in ScienceAlert: they’ve found a cure for Alzheimer’s.

It comforts me to know E. is thinking of Mom, too. I know this has all been incredibly hard on both of us, but is it true? Could this nightmare be coming to an end?

The news makes me want to celebrate. I’m renewed with hope. Just when I had given up praying for what I finally convinced myself was impossible: life never ceases to surprise me.