I STILL SET HIS PLACE AT BREAKFAST

Dear Delyara, My husband has been in a memory-care facility since October. Every morning, I still put two bowls on the table. One for oatmeal with blueberries. One with brown sugar and too much milk, exactly how he liked it. Then I remember. Today I left his bowl there until noon. I visited him yesterday. He asked whether I was his sister. Then he leaned toward the nurse and whispered, “That woman keeps looking at me.” That woman. We married in 1968. I carried his children. I sat beside him through two heart attacks. I know the scar under his chin came from falling off a bicycle when he was nine. He does not know my name. People speak to me as if I have already lost him, but he is still alive. He eats lunch. He laughs at television. His hands are warm when I hold them. I am a widow whose husband is breathing. There is no ceremony for this kind of death. So I keep setting his bowl down every morning, because somewhere in my body, he is still late for breakfast.