There were good days and bad days, but the bad days became much more frequent. It hit me like a train when I realised that five years weren't all that many to begin with, and even then, five years were being optimistic. Liron, realistically, had much less time than that.

It had been four months since the diagnosis, and the earlier symptoms were worsening. The medication was becoming useless. 

There was always a lingering fear behind my thoughts, and it grew bigger, sharper, as the days passed. In Autumn, Liron was showing signs of advancing dementia. He would get lost in the apartment, ask questions and then forget their answers immediately, and ask them again. He didn't speak like he used to, either. The usually wistful phrasing he used turned simple, direct. Long convoluted thoughts were turned into short, simple ones. Liron was a shadow.

We slept on Thanksgiving. Well, I slept. Liron didn't sleep anymore.

In Winter, he started forgetting things he should know. The day of the week, the month... my name. I had to start helping him dress.

That shard of ice in my thoughts was beginning to pierce deeper into my conscious thoughts with a terrible, frightening truth. We didn't have a lot of time left. Liron lied to me. He was standing with one foot in the grave and waving his life away.

I had a difficult time processing it. I called Natasha, and told them I we had to go to new York. there was an unspoken connotation with that. Liron is dying. 

So, we did. We made the arrangements, and I told Liron about our trip. For a moment, he seemed filled with life again - it was a fleeting moment. That single memory of light in our darkest days was a photograph carried away in the storm.

In truth, I had been broken by then. Every time that Liron - the real Liron - slipped a bit further and further away from me, I died a little on the inside. The man I was taking to New York wasn't the man I knew. It was a soulless, lifeless, husk, filled with pain and bearing the shadow of death.

It was hard on all of us. I don't even think Liron cared anymore. I don't even know if he could care anymore. I was wrong. Liron wasn't dying. Liron had already died in front of us, and left us with a walking corpse.