Happy Birthday

She will be 88 on Wednesday, they had a birthday gathering today.  I went.  She was dressed up instead of just wearing her jammies or pants.  She doesn’t recognize me, in fact, not anyone that came really.  But, she knows we all belong.  She knows I belong, somehow, some way, I belong.  She walked around to everyone saying hi, and muttering a few other things, sometimes understandable, sometimes not.  She hugged, she touched.  She held my hands.  She ate some cake.  She moves around so well considering and is still very talkative, happy.  Its amazing to me, to watch, to listen.  Amazing to think that she is still pretty active since at night she is so tired.  The other day I was there a little early and she was watching TV.  I turned her show on and she immediately got up and started toward the TV, hands held up to pray and talk to the preacher.  What does she think?  What does she see?

Conversations with someone

Last night when I arrived, she was already in bed, but not asleep.  Something must have woken her, but no one knows for sure.  She is talking, but not to me.  She doesn't even acknowledge that I came in.  I realize the mind goes with Alzheimer's, but found myself thinking "she's having a conversation with someone."  She was gesturing with her hands, pointing to things, raising her arms.  Sometimes when she talked it was English, other times it was Spanish.  She mentioned the TV, something about "all we have," told someone they can't do something, and when I sneezed, she said "God bless you."

She talked for some time, much longer than usual.  At one point I saw 2am and she was still talking, although by then, she was slowing down, finally falling to sleep.  A few times she did ask me if I was OK, referring to me as Mija.

I wish I could just climb into her mind for a day, especially at times like last night, to learn more about what is going on, to see who she was talking to.  People may dismiss it as just part of the course of the disease, I like to think that maybe, just maybe she was talking with her Savior.