Beautiful Baby, Beautiful Brain

As a disease like Alzheimer’s progresses there can be difficult moments, and if you allow yourself, special moments that have the potential to make you smile, to bring you understanding, to give you gifts you could never imagine.


One such moment was years into mom’s journey with Alzheimer’s. Someone I knew was having a baby. I don’t even remember who now. I was the first born of four children. Not yet a mom myself, I had never thought to ask my mother what it was like to have her children and what it was like when she first became pregnant and had her first child.

I was laying on the bed with my mom just relaxing. It had been several years since we had been able to carry on a conversation. Every few months she might respond to a question with a one word answer, and I knew that there were at least times that she understood.

This occasion was one such occasion. As I laid there, I said, half out loud and half to myself, “I wonder what it was like when you had your first baby.” I didn’t expect that mom understood my question. I certainly didn’t expect an answer. I thought to myself, I wish I would have thought to have asked her about this when she could have told me.

Five minutes later, I heard a weak voice as I watched her face form as her lips spoke the word, slowly, “BE……U…….TA…….FL” and a tear traveled gently down her check.

I realized that she heard me, processed my question, and it took her all that time to respond. I will never forget that.

It is my belief when someone goes through brain injury, coma, Alzheimer’s, etc. that there is a chance they can hear you, and understand you, even if they can’t respond. And so, as my mother faced this journey in her life with Alzheimer’s I decided I would always assume she could hear and understand me, even if she couldn’t respond.

She proved that day, at least sometimes, that I was right.