Every morning, Thomas sat at Eleanor’s bedside with a worn leather book in his hands. Its spine was cracked, its pages filled with their handwriting, photos pressed between lines, flowers flattened into memory.
“Shall I read to you, my love?” he asked softly.
Eleanor smiled faintly, sometimes with warmth, sometimes with puzzlement—as if she wasn’t sure if she should know him. Still, she nodded.
And so Thomas began.
He read about the night they met at a dance hall when Eleanor wore a yellow dress and he tripped over his own shoes, nearly falling as he asked her name. She laughed, and in that laugh, he found his future.
He read of the spring wedding where rain poured so hard the church roof leaked, and yet their vows felt like sunlight.
He read of danger: the car accident that left them stranded in the snow, Eleanor clutching his hand as headlights never came. The cancer scare that nearly shattered them but ended in a miracle.
He read of laughter: The holidays where nothing went right—burnt turkeys, forgotten presents—and how they laughed about it years later.
He read of the birth of their precious son, of their darling daughter born years later, who came into the world so silent.
He read of joy too: dancing in the kitchen after midnight, trips to the sea, anniversaries marked with nothing more than cheap wine and the certainty of love.
Every page carried both storms and calm, as every life does.
Sometimes, as he read, Eleanor’s eyes widened. She gasped and whispered, “Thomas… this is us. Isn’t it?”
And for one precious moment, the fog lifted. His Eleanor was there again, shining through.
“Yes, my darling,” he said, pressing her hand to his lips. “It’s us.”
But the moments never lasted. By the time he closed the book, her gaze would grow clouded again.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Then came the harder days. The screaming, temper tantrums and the confusion—her fear at her own reflection, her pleas to “go home”.
Thomas endured it all. His heart broke in ways words could not touch.
Still, he read.
He read through her tears, through her screams, through the vacant stares. He read because sometimes—just sometimes—she came back to him. For a second, an hour, a breath. And in those moments, it was as if the years of loss fell away and he was holding his Eleanor once more.
It was grief. It was love. It was both at once.
And though some days were heavy, his will to carry on was stronger—for his precious Eleanor, and for the woman who had made his ordinary life extraordinary.
Love is not always grand gestures or sweeping declarations. Sometimes it is quiet, patient devotion—the willingness to remind someone who they are, even when they cannot remember.
Thomas knew he could not stop the forgetting. But he could give Eleanor moments of remembering. Moments where love was stronger than loss.
Thomas knew this: that devotion is not only for the easy days. It is for the nights of confusion, for the moments when love is not returned, for the faith that even when the mind forgets, the heart still remembers.
And that is the truest measure of love: not that it is always recognized, but that it is always given.
To love someone fully is to hold their story even when they cannot.
And to keep reading it back to them—again and again—until the last page.
Body of Brilliance 