she's still teaching

I used to babysit a lot, long before I grew up and had babies of my own. I spent time with many pre-verbal toddlers, and learned to listen, to interpret, to understand their unspoken wants and needs.

In the big circle of life, my mom, now in diapers, is largely post-verbal.

And yet she's still teaching me.
When I can listen.

Today I sat with her, where she was, and understood that she wanted to look at the pictures of her loved ones, pictures that normally hang on the wall behind her bed. We started wtih the portrait of her four daughters. She could still read our names aloud, from the labels down by the frame. But even when I took my label and held it up to my chest--"See? Me! Cindy!"--she never could make the connection.

That ray of sunlight never broke through.

Then a little voice inside me said, "Take down the picture of her daddy. They had a special bond. She might remember."

So I did--and then sang to her the silly song that he used to sing.

Whether it's cold or whether it's hot,

We're gonna have a'weather, whether, whether or not...

As I rounded the turn to the final phrase, she pointed to the picture of Granddaddy and said, "She had a daughter who died."

"That's right," I said, "Sunny."

Not only did she have a moment of memory, but it was her earliest one, from when she was not quite three years old, the moment her older sister was hit by a car and killed. It's still in there.

And then she said, still pointing at Granddaddy's picture, "She's not still living. She died."

Mom may not be able to get her pronouns straight, but she remembered her daddy--her first memory of him, and her last.

And because I was able to listen, both to her and to my own inner voice, we were able to go there together.

What other miracles might happen if I really listen?

She's still teaching me.
When I can listen.