The Days Gone By

Theodore Buckley was sitting up straight, slightly leaning on his right arm, looking out a window of the nursing home where he lives. The view outside was simply that of street corner with nobody walking it, but he was not actually paying attention to that. Theodore was just trying to think, or rather remember. Remember all the missing pieces in his life that were being stolen from him. Trying hard but always coming up short. More often than not he just replayed one event.
That event being a calm, seemingly unimportant day at the doctors office. A day when he felt perfectly fine and healthy. Nothing strange or out of the ordinary was affecting him as far as he knew; even for someone who was in his early sixties he thought he was almost invincible. Sure one would read or hear about all sorts of serious medical problems affecting other people; cancer, heart disease, they were everywhere in the world, but they were nowhere in the mind of the person it wasn’t infecting. That person, with little or no affiliation to an illness, carried on with their lives, living each day worrying about other problems that were more relevant to them, oblivious of other’s suffering. That’s how Theodore lived, but he would stop living that way after that day in the doctor’s office.
“How’s it going, Doc?” Theodore greeted upon the doctor’s entry into the room, a sly old grin on his face. “Am I as fit as I feel?” 
The doctor did not return any of the enthusiasm that was given to him. In fact, his face held a grim overcast, upset with the information he was about to give.
“Mr. Buckley,” he began, immediately being cut off by his patient, insisting that he call him Ted, as being referred by his last name made him feel old. The doctor began again. “Ted, I am afraid that the tests we took last week have come in, and they’re not very good.”
“What tests?” Ted replied, confused, having no recollection of any prior exams ever being taken a week ago. This visit was just a routine check up to his knowledge.
“We had neurological scans taken of your brain,” the doctor began. “They showed early stages of progressive tissue deterioration. The neurons and synapses, the cells that transmit messages in your mind, are dying out.” The doctor stopped, allowing Ted to take all this in. “This had lead to a diagnosis of...dementia. Specifically Alzheimer's disease.”
No real expression could be seen on his face. Nothing like this has ever occurred in Ted’s life.
“There has to be a mistake,” he stated bluntly. “I feel perfectly fine. I can remember everything well enough. Right now I can tell you about my childhood, college, my reporting in Vietnam…”
“I’m sure you can,” the doctor interrupted, “however, as the disease is in it’s early stages, you’ll just start to lose short term memories. It will escalate to you forgetting the majority of your life.”
“But I haven't forgotten anything recently.”
The doctor sighed. “Do you remember the tests we took last week? Or the event that lead to those tests? Are you even sure as to how yourself to the hospital?”
Ted tried to remember all of those things but couldn’t. He felt like he was being attacked right now. Everything the doctor was saying ment that Ted was going to forget everything he was, everything that he is. He couldn’t remember anything from last week, or what the “event” was that brought him to the testing in the first place, he wasn’t even sure how he got here and that was just earlier that day. 
“Mr. Buckley, try to breath regularly!” the doctor said, moving to Ted’s side to make sure he didn’t keel over. Without realizing it, Ted was hyperventilating, having a panic attack about what everything he was just told and is just realizing. This couldn’t be happening to him.
“What’s going to happen to me?” Ted asked.
“Try to calm down first,” he replied. “Take slow breaths.”
Doing as the doctor suggested, Ted took slow, deep breaths, regaining his composure. After the doctor was sure he could handle it, he began listing what was going to happen.
“Right now you’ll just have short-term memory problems, including certain problems with language and motor skills. As the disease progresses, older memories will become incomplete and harder to remember. It’s typical of patients with Alzheimer's to have less control of their emotions and actions. You’ll have a loss of sense as to where you are.” The doctor ended, letting Ted take it all in.
Ted just looked down, unsure of what to do. “How long do I have?” he asked sullenly.
“I would have to say eight to ten years, considering the scan report,” the doctor said.
That seemed like too much time for Ted. He didn’t want live with a disease like this, crippling his body and mind. One of the few things he believed in was that what a person was at the end was their memories. A whole life time of feelings, events, stories to tell other people and remember when you have nothing. Now he was gonna lose all that.
Sitting in silence, the doctor grew uncomfortable. He wanted to reassure his patient but wasn’t sure how. Finally, a full minute after the last word was spoken the doctor said, “If its any consolation, you won’t remember that you have the  disease. Most people forget it after the first year, so you won’t know you’re forgetting your life.”

But the doctor was wrong. While every other memory was being lost, that event stayed in Theodore’s mind. He forgot his family, the friends of his youth, everything that he was. And he was aware of it all. After one year he was supposed to forget that he was forgetting, so that the pain of loss wouldn’t show itself to him, but nine years later he still knew about what he was losing. He was conscious of it all. He slowly died every day, knowing that the events of his life that made him into the person he was were leaving him.
He tried writing them down at first, but he kept getting frustrated with what he came up with. His childhood seemed already non-existent in his mind, he felt there was nothing he wanted to remember of his 20’s and 30’s, and couldn’t find a single thing to give a damn about in the last 30 years of his live. He always believed that a person was defined by what they did, to which he discovered he do a single thing that was worthwhile.
In his hand was a single piece of paper that stated what he guessed were facts about him. Unsure where he got it from, Ted figured that it was from himself, settling a few things he decided to remember. Included on the list was his name because he was fearful of forgetting that, what he did for most of his life which was being a journalist that never made anything of himself, and the name of one other person. Sally Sparrow. The name meant nothing to him, which made him depressed, because if it was on his list then it was something that at the time he wanted to make sure he remembered. Now he can’t think of anything that name could have been to him.
So much of his existence was lost, and he was aware of it all.
But, powerless to it, after nine years of losing everything including his ability to move on his own, Theodore Buckley just sat on the chair in his nursing home, looking out into the world, a world that he forgot. Waiting to die from the disease that took everything from him.