During one of my frequent visits, Neil started fussing about one of his recurring problems. "They stole my mechanical pencil." His fingers tightened and loosened rhythmically as if their motion would magically create the cherished tool that helped script all those equations used in space research.         "We'll look for it. It must be in one of the usual places." I searched tabletops cluttered with empty shoes boxes, winter mittens, and stacks of utility bills from the 1960s all carefully bound by multiple rubber bands. I scanned shelves filled with the expected books, but with the unexpected forks and wads of paper, rusty pliers and empty bread bags.         "Here's your mechanical pencil. It's stuck in the toe of your slipper at the back of the shelf in the closet."         "Yep, that's where I keep it." Neil spoke with a calm certainty that I learned to expect in the face of the irrational. His eyes, clear and blue as the Saskatchewan skies of his boyhood, widened in innocence and ignorance of the implications of these discussions.         Age created a spindle-like quality to Neil's already-thin body. He had spun on the lathe of life for nearly eighty years, and his pale, smooth skin stretched tight over the knobby joints of his arms and legs. He still had a thick thatch of hair, but the sandy hue was polished by the years to a silver sheen.         Neil couldn't live alone any longer, and my sisters and I decided that, as eldest daughter and with a spare bedroom, I should have Neil join my husband and teenage stepson. He stayed a year with us, then silently packed a pillowcase with his treasured items and disappeared for several weeks. My sisters and I would get calls from him, but he wouldn't say from what motel or restaurant he was placing the call.         Finally, after six weeks, he appeared on my youngest sister's doorstep and begged to stay for a short time. "Short" turned into four years. Alzheimer's continued to alter Neil's rational abilities and disrupt the family life of my sister, her husband, and three small daughters.         Then the day came when we couldn't make more excuses or allowances or accommodations. "Where's the rest of your car?" I asked Neil. The entire front end was sheared off; everything in front of the radiator was missing. Bumper. Lights. Grill.        "I don't know," he said.         I knew he really didn't know, but the incidents were increasing: the unexplained crease in the fender a few weeks prior, the day the police brought him home to my sister's after he parked in a neighbor's driveway and began wandering around the yard, and then his call from the local 7 Eleven around the corner when he couldn't find his way home.         Neil had to have his driver's license revoked. The Secretary of State's office said they couldn't suspend his license without cause, so I asked a friend in health care to recommend a psychiatrist to handle the formality of an official evaluation.