Not a night for sleep in this house until just now, at 5:14 or so with the birds beginning to chatter and the sky lightening, my mother ceased saying the same two words--that name she cannot let go of-- over and over and over and finally drifted off. No wait, no. Oh no, no no. The silence is over. Do I give her another pill, a half or a quarter? The quiet is broken and it was just a few minutes. No peace for Betty: she is starting to speak again, so determined to remember, for whatever reason, that she cannot close her eyes or stop saying the name of this woman she barely knew so many years ago but has recently re-encountered. For only a few minutes. Two months ago. They said perhaps ten words. They were never friends, barely acquaintances. My father helped the woman remodel her house more than forty years ago; he said she was a pain. It took her days to choose a shade of paint for her little bare house way far out in the country. Of course it wound up white, but she had wanted to consider every color, as if she were planning to embark on a more flamboyant era in a house more daring, in her old worn shoes. My father said she told him it was a treat to get to come to down on her own. She had so many children. And here she is, in our house now, in the hallways of my mother's head, demanding to be recalled. Hour after hour my mother has said this name, the name of this woman, someone who was no one that Betty ever, ever thought about or mentioned when our lives were normal. Day after day now. Week after week. Sometimes she seems to be calling her. Sometimes she exclaims the name as if this woman has just walked into the room. Sometimes she says it as if she is just furious at this woman who, God help her, is miles away sleeping or thinking about maybe getting up to collect the eggs from the chickens or go to the toilet, not knowing she is the object of this obsessive litany, just waking up, unsuspecting that in town, on a pretty green street, another woman's mind has made her so desperately important. My mother almost chants this name as if it were the key to everything, as if this woman had told her some great truth or secret or reminded her of something I will never know. Do I give her another pill, a half or a quarter? It wouldn't help. Nothing stops this disease when it is running full strength. This is where we are. The absolutely unbreakable power of the will to remember, to ask and ask and ask is finally astonishing. This will cannot give up or rest an instant. It is relentless and unmerciful. It drives her and drains all of these rest of her. Why this name so often sought? That is part of the mystery, but there is no logic. Why this name repeated and repeated hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times, thousands by now, for more than two months as if that big old farm woman who sat down by her in a church basement just to rest her feet for ten minutes was the most important personage my mother remembers from all her decades on the Earth. Just a funny, sweet old farm woman with swollen ankles overflowing her old black shoes and a plain dress owned forever. She has invaded my mother's head, this house, this odd, never-ending summer night when no one snores but the dog. It is the strangest thing. I will never, ever forget this woman now. She has became a friend and going in to get breakfast I feel like I should get a third plate down from the cabinet.