After nearly sixty years of marriage, I believed I knew everything about Henry—except for one rule: never enter his garage.
One afternoon, I did.
Inside, every wall was covered with portraits of the same woman—laughing, aging, crying. It took me a moment to realize the woman was me. The paintings were dated across decades… even into the future.
I thought it was betrayal.
Days later, I followed Henry to a neurology clinic and overheard the truth. The doctors weren’t discussing another woman—they were talking about me. Alzheimer’s. A diagnosis he’d hidden for five years.
The paintings weren’t obsession. They were preservation.
Henry had been capturing every version of my face, preparing for the day I might not recognize my own reflection—or him. One future portrait showed my eyes empty, but his hand still holding mine. Beneath it he’d written: “Even if she doesn’t know my name, she will know she is loved.”
I added my own line: “If I forget everything else, I hope I remember how he held my hand.”
Now the garage door stays open. We face the future together. He isn’t hiding from my fading memory—he’s becoming it.
Henry wasn’t building a secret life.
He was building a way to love me, even after I forget how to love him back.