It was a breezy, early autumn morning in the town of Elderville. Walter's legs crunched as he rose from the bed. This 40-degree weather did not agree with him. His body struggled to move when he got up in the mornings, not only because he was nearing death but also because the space heater he found in the dumpster in the back of the McDonald’s parking lot only worked twenty percent of the time to heat his small cottage home. Walter's wife had passed nine years ago, and he was still trying to accept that it was real. When he waddled to the kitchen in the morning to get his daily dose of coffee, he would still pour his wife a steamy cup and place it in her usual spot by her red velvet chair. He would still make her favorite meals every night at 6 o’clock sharp and dish her a plate. He would still buy her freshly picked, glorious flowers every month. And he still whispered, “I love you, Mildred, " every night before he fell asleep. He wished he would wake up one day and see her dinner and coffee gone, but every morning it still lay cold and untouched. Every once in a while, a mouse would come by and get into her food. It would leave a trail of crumbs and Walter always got a huge sigh of relief, until he saw the mouse scurrying away.

However, this routine did not stay for forever. On November 17th, Walter heard banging on his door. He aggressively swung the door open to see three young children jumping up and down, yelling ecstatically, “Happy 89th birthday, Grandpa!”

Walter vigorously pushed the kids down to the ground and said, “Get out of here, you scums. Go back to where you belong.” He had no idea who these children were, and he wanted nothing to do with them. As they looked at him with tears in their eyes, he slammed the door shut. Walter’s family knew something was wrong with him; he wasn’t the person he used to be. Eventually, they could not take it anymore and moved him into a nursing home.

When walking through the nursing home doors, a beautiful lady who looked to be in her 80s, just like Walter, caught the corner of his eye. In awe, Walter dropped his cane and stumbled over to her as fast as he could, “Oh, my sweet wife, I’ve missed you so much!” 

She looked at him with a grin on her face and responded, “Jim, I’ve missed you so much more!”  Walter was so ecstatic that he did not even realize that he had been called by the wrong name. They ate a delicious dinner together later that night and talked for hours on end, catching up on everything. Walter finally felt complete now that he had his wife back. The two of them lived their lives until the day they passed, thinking they were each other's spouses. Nobody questioned it, and nobody wanted to ruin their happiness, so they let them be in their Alzheimer’s bliss.