I know why the caged bird sings

A FEW MONTHS AGO, Mom was fine.

She was working the dirt in her flower garden.

Cooking evening meals for my sister’s family.

Watching Hallmark movies at night.

She can’t do any of that now. A series of strokes took that away from her.

She can’t see me.

Yet sometimes she sees what isn’t there.

She points me to a doctor’s office in her laundry room. And I remind her that it’s the laundry room.

She sees several men standing beside us. I ask if she knows them. She says she does. I ask if they are good guys. She says they are. I ask for their names. She says she can’t say.

I tell her that in her mind’s eye she sees what we can’t and that we see what she can’t.

My son, standing with us, adds that between the two of us, we see a lot.

Mom laughs.

One doc says those images are from Mom’s memories.

The picture

I visited Mom last weekend. While I was there, I took pictures of the family. One was of my little sister. When I mentioned what a nice picture it was, Mom said, “I’d like to see that picture.”

It was on my phone.

I paused, wondering why she would ask.

I took the phone over to her and held it in front of her face.

“It’s right here,” I said, “a few feet away, Mom.”

I moved it slowly toward her. My stomach sank.

“Mom,” I said. “I’m going to let it touch your nose so you’ll know where it is.”

It touched her.

She stared silently, as I backed the phone away.

“The picture isn’t bright enough,” I said.

Normal Nanny

Her grandkids call her Nanny.

Since the strokes, she is sometimes what I call Normal Nanny and sometimes Not Normal Nanny.

Holding her hand as I speak, I talk with her about that. She knows something’s wrong. Something has changed her behavior, her vision, and nearly everything else about her life.

She asked what is happening to her. She said she’s sorry for the times she becomes someone else. She remembers what the Not Normal Nanny does, but she doesn’t know why she does it.

The music

So, there I am, sitting in a chair a few feet away from her, wondering which Nanny is looking about the room.

I call up a video on my phone of The Church Sisters singing “In the Garden.” And Mom—whether normal or not so normal—starts to sing along.

I start to sing, too. My son pulls out his phone to videotape it, because we Millers record our history one way or another.

I try to sing the whole song but choke on the last chorus and fall silent when Mom keeps singing, her arms waving in the air, “He walks with me and talks with me and he tells me I am His own.”

Then Alan Jackson sings “The Old Rugged Cross.” Mom and I sing along, with apologies to Mr. Jackson.

Then Gaither, “Because He Lives.”

We sang and talked into the evening, through her usual nap time.

While I visited with Mom, I tried several ways to reach her when she stepped into another place. A hand in hers. Soft words of reason. Jokes, on occasion.

But the only approach that always worked was a song that rose from out of the spirit that lives within her. And from within me.

“I want to hear the sound of joy.
I want my broken spirit to sing.”
Psalm 51:9

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