Ethan was sitting on the edge of his mother’s bed, his back to the door and Mrs. Turner lying with her eyes closed. Her face was serene, lips softly parted as if in sleep. But what caught Grace’s attention was the tapestry of shadows thrown by the flickering candlelight. The room was filled with an array of old photographs, some hanging on the walls and others strewn across the bed and floor. They depicted Ethan at various stages of his life: as a child, a teenager, a young man. In each, his mother was by his side, always with an unchanging, loving gaze.
It was then that Grace noticed something else: a series of journals arranged neatly at the bedside table. Mrs. Turner’s frail hand rested on them, her fingers twitching as if tracing invisible lines. Ethan whispered softly, but his words were more than lullabies—they were stories from the past, painstakingly recounted to keep his mother anchored to reality.
Grace’s heart ached with a new understanding. Mrs. Turner wasn’t just suffering from insomnia; she was battling a slow descent into dementia. Ethan’s nightly visits weren’t a matter of preference; they were part of an unspoken duty to keep his mother connected to the world through the memories they shared.
