The children are coming for Christmas.
Will this be the year
when he does not remember their names?

“When are we going home?�
“We are at home. This is our house.�
He frowns. “No, I mean…� and flaps his hands helplessly.
He has forgotten the words.
I know he means his boyhood home.
The last sixty years have faded away.

The children are coming for Christmas.
They can put up the decorations.
I have put up wards around the house
so that he cannot wander away in the night,
looking for that other home.

“Where are the others?�
I no longer ask “What others?� He cannot answer.
He means the children.
“They live in their own homes now,� I say.
“They will be here for Christmas.�
I do not mention the one
cut down in the bloom of youth.
He has forgotten.
To remind him would be
as if he was hearing it for the first time,
with that first-time flood of grief.
I thought there was no greater tragedy
than a life ended suddenly in its prime.
But now I am grateful for one thing:
he did not die like this.

The children are coming for Christmas.
“What should we get for Dad?� they ask.
I suggest hats and gloves.
He loses his hats and gloves
or puts them in odd, obscure places.
I hunt through the house for them.
“Accio hat! Accio gloves!�
Sometimes it does not work.

The children are coming for Christmas.
I will let them cook the meals, the special dishes.
I have put my potion ingredients into boxes
and hidden them deep in a cupboard
so he will not try to eat them,
thinking they are food.

The children are coming for Christmas.
They can sweep the damp, dead leaves off the floor.
I do not have time.
“Here is your shirt, sweetheart.
Here are your trousers.
This is your toothbrush.�
Time has slowed to a crawl.
Everything takes forever.

The children have come home for Christmas.
He calls them by his brothers’ names.
They look at me sideways but say nothing.
Words are not needed.

There will come a Christmas
when all this is finished,
but I will not grieve then.
My grieving will be finished too.