There is peace in senility, for some. For others, the weakening of the mind with old age brings back harsher memories.

Few or none in the nursing home knew just how old the old man was, though, had anyone cared to check, the information was there in his file. Among some of the staff it was rumored he was past one hundred, yet few or none of them cared enough to check that either. Though he was almost utterly bald, shriveled and shrunken and sometimes demented, none of the staff cared about that. The old man spoke but rarely and even more rarely did he seem to speak with understanding. Sometimes, at night, the watch nurse would hear him cry from his room with words like, “Vorwärts, Manfred… Hold them, meine Brüdern…” or “Steisse, die Panzer.”

Sometimes, too, the old man would cry a name softly, whisper with regret, hum a few bars of some long-forgotten, perhaps even forbidden, tune.

It was whispered, by those who washed him and those who spoke with the washers, that he had a tattooed number on his torso. They whispered too of the scars, the burns, the puckermarks.

Everyday, rain or shine, bundled up or not as the weather dictated, the staff wheeled the old man out onto the nursing home’s porch for a bit of fresh air. This day, the fresh air was cold and heavy, laden with the moisture of falling snow. What dreams or nightmares the cold snow brought, none ever knew — the old man never said.