I am 8 years old, sprawled under the cherry tree in our back yard. This is more than a memory.

The bed of October leaves around me, which moments ago I kicked into place and fancy a fortress, crunch between my fingertips. Mourning doves coo in the branches above me, and in the distance I hear a dog barking and somewhere beyond that the lazy whine of a lawn mower. I am aware of it all. I am connected to it all. Without knowing anything, I know everything. I understand what it is to be free.

And then a different time, a time of uncertainty. A hollow-eyed young man wearing bell bottoms, a ponytail, and a heavy coat of cynicism, high on purple haze. At the kitchen table, enthralled by a piece of fruit, by every magnificent, magnified pore on its intensely orange, pulsating skin. The young man wonders: will this experience help him make better sense of a senseless world?

This, too, more than memory, more than some flat recollection meant to coax forth the past. I am not reliving these moments so much as inhabiting them, not watching so much as experiencing my former self from the inside out.

I am with my sister now. We are doing our part in a holiday tradition that is also a challenge: complete a puzzle unwrapped Christmas morning by New Year’s Day. This is by far our family’s most difficult effort, a 500-piece classic, Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee. I have always loved puzzles. There is something so pleasing about taking a fractured thing and making it whole again—that magic way you feel when you find the right piece and it fits perfectly with everything around it.

The two of us, knees on chairs over the dining room table, working in from the edges. Meg is 14 and I have just turned 9.

A soft light spreads before me, spilling into the room.

The good one is here. She is my favorite.

“Ah, Mr. Bibbi,” she says, taking the chart from the end of my bed, “you don’t want to wake up yet, eh?”

She has the most beautiful chocolate skin and luminous hazel eyes. Her hair is in braids with delicate glass beads at the ends. I am drawn to her voice.

Another one comes in. A man I do not recognize. She hands him the chart. “No change, doctor. He is still conscious but unresponsive.”

“Any sign of discomfort or agitation?” doctor asks.

“None,” she says with a hint of pride. “He is my best patient.”

“Stroke can be tricky,” he replies, handing back the chart.

“His relatives have been notified,” favorite says. “They will be coming from out of town as soon as they are able.”

Doctor does not reply.

Meg and I are making progress, but I see that she is losing interest because she keeps trying to put the same piece in the wrong spot, turning it this way and that, as if wishing it into place would be enough. For no reason, and without thinking, I say to her, “the jig is up, saw puzzle.”

This makes her laugh, and her laughing makes me laugh. And my laughing makes her laugh harder. And that makes me laugh harder still, until we are both laughing uncontrollably without knowing why, until it hurts our stomachs and we need to blow our noses. When we finally settle down, we go in the kitchen to make lunch without saying another word about it.

Favorite is here again, changing the bag that is dripping something into me. “I hope your people get here soon,” she says, stroking my forehead. “I’m sure you will wake up for them. But don’t you worry, Mr. Bibbi, I am going to take good care of you all night long.”

She holds my hand. “I know what it’s like to be alone, Mr. Bibbi, and I don’t have to tell you, it’s no picnic. My man has been deployed for going on eight months now, near Yemen of all places! Just between me and you,” she says, lowering her voice, “I miss him inside me. Goodness, how I miss that.”

She laughs. “Listen to me, telling secrets! I miss other things, too,” she says. “Just knowing he’s there, close by, and, you know, doing little things for him he doesn’t even appreciate.” She laughs again. “You men are so helpless, eh?”

She bends toward me and lifts my arm, gently holding it between her breasts. “I miss the dancing, too,” she says. “How close we could get.” Her hips begin to sway to some imaginary music, the end of her stethoscope keeping time like a metronome. With my arm as her dancing partner, she does a little twirl in the half light, her shoes ever-so-slightly squeaking on the linoleum floor.

“I bet you were a good dancer, eh, Mr. Bibbi? I can tell these things. I bet you had all the moves,” she says, smiling down at me. “I bet you drove the ladies crazy.”

If I think about it, I was never much of a dancer. I always felt too self-conscious, like everybody was watching and I was going to do something wrong. It was always difficult to let go, with a lot of things. What seemed to come naturally to other people never came naturally to me. My body often failed me. No matter how complex and wonderful, a body seems a primitive enclosure for a soul.

I never had much in the way of faith. Not like my wife. I envied her that. Her belief was so strong. I went to church for her sake, but religion was a subject we rarely discussed, maybe out of respect. I’m not sure her faith did her much good, because God never gave her a child, and then dementia stole her mind.

We are on a driving tour of Maine for our 40^th anniversary; we had never been. We crest a hill at day’s end and come upon a scenic overlook. There, before us, a vista of fresh-water ponds, woodland lakes, and the Penobscot Bay leading to the ocean. All of it bathed in the soft hues of the setting sun.

We hold hands in silence, happy to be seeing this, happy to have each other. Finally, she says, “if you ever needed evidence there is a God in heaven, here it is.”

Favorite is here but leaves quickly. Perhaps there is an emergency somewhere.

It is New Year’s Day. Whoever does the most work on the puzzle gets the honor of setting the last piece in place. My dad says it is me and I am proud. The fractured thing is whole again.

If I think about it, I am grateful for all these scenes, but I do not yearn for them. I no longer feel attached to them.

If I think about it, I am grateful for a lot of things, favorite, too. She is warm and kind, and I danced with her.

But there is no more need for thinking. Everything is as it should be. Everything fits. Everything is child’s play now.