National service typically comes down to enlisting in the military or caring for the elderly. A no-brainer, really. For one thing, if she doesn’t make it through the next three years, I can go back to school a little early. In the army, the only hope of getting out early is in a box.

That’s one way to take care of an ageing population—make sure nobody gets the chance to grow old.

“Are you my daughter?” she asks.

I say I’m not.

“You look like her,” she says. “Have you met her?”

I tell her no, that I’m not allowed to. I’d bet that comes up a lot.

It’s nice to see her love for books never dwindled. At 108 years old, her vision isn’t up to it, let alone her attention span. But the love is there. Her shelves are sagging with it.

She asks me where I was born for the third time today. I say the same thing as before. Right here.

She asks me then about my watch, says she used to have one just the same—gold with the floral pattern on the face. It is the same one, but I don’t tell her. It would confuse her. And I wonder if we’ve had this whole conversation before too. Only she could know, and she doesn’t seem to mind.

Strange that I should be the one at a disadvantage, but for me every shift is like the first. A blessing, no doubt. You hear about regular carers, even the good ones, being driven out of their minds by the same questions day in, day out.

“What do you study?” she asks, as I sort out her meds.

Civil engineering, I tell her, again, but that these days everyone is expected to put a little back. So my studies are on hold until my service is up.

She says she was an engineer too, she thinks. Bridges. Bridges. That’s something to aspire to. Life disappoints so easily, but it would take an earthquake to cheat me out of that legacy.

A bridge connects, just as memory connects the episodes of our lives, connects our lives to one another’s. Her bridges collapse without notice, setting her islands adrift. A whole dimension of her life shatters into useless shards.

Now I find her shuffling around and patting her thighs in the hunt for her phone. No one has used one of those for years now, the NightNurse tells me. I suppose that could be wonderful too, at times, to be made young again. To swim against the current.

If only every disease were like dementia, where you could go for hours gleefully unaware that you have it, and return instead to the good old days.

I cleverly transport her to the present with an offer of tea and pastel. When I pull the rug fast enough it doesn’t devolve into an argument about whose reality we should live in.

“My favorite,” she says, about the pastel.

I say I know.

“Where were you born,” she asks. I tell her.

Then she asks about her husband—long gone; and her children—the last war. I tell her they’re coming soon, so they can live a while longer behind her eyes. I know it’s what I’d want.

With our tea, we swipe through old photos. She walks me through the honeymoon years. He’s handsome. I don’t know him yet. The children are small. I smile and try not to cry. I don’t ask too many questions; there’d be no point.

She gazes up at me, her eyes crumpling. “I was so young!”

I nod sympathetically.

When she crawls back to lucidity and remembers all she’s lost, she’s a wreck. Darkness fills the sad silence. She turns to me and says, “If only I’d known…” I think she means the torture of being the only one left behind.

When the sun goes down I lose her altogether. The night swallows her whole. She stares at her hands, unable to believe they are her own. She doesn’t recognize this place. It’s her home, has been for all these years, but with the children gone it’s unfamiliar. Now she’s a ghost in her own house, and more than making her supper, or helping her to the bathroom, I’m here to remind her she’s real.

She’s lived through some horrors, but is this the worst?

Should I have joined the army instead?

“Take care of yourself,” she says, as I tuck her into bed. I chuckle hollowly. Maybe some part of her knows, yet she’d much rather stay in the dark. We aren’t so different after all.

That gets truer every day, I guess. She’s not making any new memories. She stands still while I creep, day by day, towards her.

Now she sleeps. Her rattling breathing betrays her frailty, and I’m scared to leave her alone. But the NightNurse promises it’ll keep a close eye on her. I’ll be back before she wakes up, when we’ll meet again for the first time.

The instant I step into the vestibule, the day starts to unravel. Information can’t travel back, and that includes memories. Something doesn’t allow it. I guess it couldn’t work any other way.

Faint impressions remain, like remembering the colors but not the outline, like when you glance at your pretty little watch and you remember the gold leaf and the petals but not what the hands read.

But as the moments melt away I’m glad of it, because to remember would only bring me sorrow. And I think what I must think every time.

That this is how it will feel.