Before the Light Fades

The day I realized my mother was forgetting me, the sun was setting.

The sky looked like it was bleeding—orange fading into violet, then blue, then almost nothing. She stood by the window, her fingers tracing the glass as if she could touch the light before it disappeared.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said softly.

“Yes,” I whispered. “It is.”

She turned to me and smiled. It was the same gentle smile I’d grown up with. But there was a flicker of confusion in her eyes, like a candle struggling against the wind.

Then she asked, “Remind me again… what was your name?”

I froze. My name. The one she’d chosen. The one she’d written on birthday cards and whispered when I was scared as a child.

For a long time, I couldn’t answer. I just stood there, watching the light fade on her face.

Finally, I said, “It’s Eli, Mom.”

She blinked, embarrassed, and nodded. “Of course, Eli. I’m sorry. My memory’s just tired today.”

I smiled even though my throat felt tight. “That’s okay, Mom. Everyone gets tired sometimes.”

But that night, when the house was quiet and the stars were spilling across the sky, I cried like a child again. Because deep down, I knew — this was only the beginning.

My mother used to paint sunsets. Our old living room walls were covered in them — streaks of gold, lavender, and red. She’d sit for hours with her brushes, saying, “Every sunset has a secret. You just have to look long enough to find it.”

When I was a boy, I never understood what she meant. I just liked watching her hands move — so steady, so alive.

Now, those hands trembled. Sometimes she forgot how to hold the brush. Sometimes she forgot she even liked to paint.

But every evening, I’d still bring her to the window. We’d watch the sun fall, together, in silence.

And for a few brief moments, it felt like time stopped losing its grip on her.

One evening, she asked me, “What comes after the sunset?”

“Night,” I said.

She shook her head gently. “No. There’s something after night too. There’s memory.”

I didn’t understand her then. But later, when I was sitting alone beside her half-finished canvas, I realized what she meant.

Even when the light fades, what we’ve seen — what we’ve loved — doesn’t vanish. It just changes form.

As months passed, her memory unraveled further. Some days she thought I was her brother. Other days, a nurse. Once, she looked at me and said, “You remind me of my son.”

I wanted to tell her, I am your son, but I didn’t. Instead, I said, “Tell me about him.”

And she did. She told me stories of me — my first steps, my favorite cereal, how I once cried because I thought the moon was following our car. She spoke with such joy, such love, that I let her keep believing I was someone else, just so I could hear her remember me one more time.

One afternoon, I found her in the garden, sitting among the daisies she’d planted years ago. Her eyes were closed, her face turned to the sun.

“Do you ever get scared?” I asked her quietly.

She opened one eye and smiled. “Of what?”

“Of forgetting everything.”

She thought for a moment, then said, “No. Because the heart remembers what the mind forgets.”

Her words broke something open inside me.

The last week she was here, the sunsets came later — summer fading into autumn. The air smelled like wood smoke and endings. She slept more, spoke less, but she still asked to be by the window every evening.

On her final night, I carried her there myself. She was light as a whisper.

The sky was on fire — a thousand colors melting into one.

“Look, Mom,” I said. “Your favorite.”

Her lips moved faintly. “It’s beautiful.”

Then she added, “Don’t let the light fade without finding the secret.”

Those were her last words.

Now, years later, her paintings still hang in my home. Some are cracked and fading, but I can’t take them down. Each one feels alive — like she’s still whispering through the brushstrokes, reminding me that beauty isn’t in what lasts, but in what glows before it’s gone.

Sometimes I paint too. Not as well as she did, but enough to feel close to her. I start each canvas with a sunset and end before it gets dark, as if I can keep her here a little longer.

And every evening, when the light begins to fade, I whisper her words back to the sky:

The heart remembers what the mind forgets.

Because even now, long after the sunsets, I still remember.

And somehow, I know — she does too.