The Perfect Song Blog

Emma sat in her nursing home room on a single bed hunched over, picking at something visible only to her from her green pants.

Emma is in the end stage of Alzheimer’s.

For a half hour she never looked up. She was intent on picking whatever she saw on that one spot on her pants.

I was visiting Margaret, Emma’s room mate. Earlier, Emma had made her way from her bed over to Margaret’s. The TV was on but Emma didn’t hear it. Margaret and I played cards and Emma took no notice of us.

To Emma’s left was Cinnamon, Margaret’s teddy bear, a gift from my mother. Emma had her own bear over on her bed but paid no attention to it. After about a half hour of picking at her pants, she leaned over the foot of the bed and spit out some phlegm, then resumed her project.

I had seen Emma often during my weekend visits but had never spoken to her. When she talks what comes out is a series of sounds unrecognizable as words.

A few minutes later, out of the corner of my eye I saw her lean down suddenly. I jerked around, thinking she was falling.

I was wrong. Emma was leaning down on the bed, smiling at  Cinnamon. She reached out and took his little white paws and helped him dance. She laughed and exclaimed something in her own language. Her smile was as wide and unguarded as a baby’s. There was a light in her eyes that I’d never seen.

Cinnamon was alive and communicating with her.

Understand that I don’t mean in her mind the bear was alive. I saw it. The little bear was living. He was smiling. His eyes glittered and the two of them were totally in synch with each other.

It happens in fairy tales. It happens in movies.

It happens in life.

The moment was so real and so wonderful – and understand I use that word knowing it means “full of wonder” – that I had to blink away tears. In this moment the little reddish bear brought real happiness to a woman given the death sentence by a disease we don’t understand.

She sat up and started to turn away. But by some force many of us refuse to recognize, the bear tipped over. He started to slide off the bed, and Emma in a movement so quick and sure it startled me, reached over and caught him before he plunged over the side. I know he did that on purpose in an effort to make her feel needed. She pulled him back up, sat him upright and said something to him, smiling, reassuring him that he would be okay.

A moment later the magic gently faded and Emma sat back up, hunched over and stared downward at nothing. She was as motionless as Cinnamon.

It all took less than a minute.

But when magic enters our lives, a minute is all that’s needed, because magic is timeless. Cinnamon, plush and cuddly, arms forever outstretched, gave Emma something no on in our limited human dimension could.

He drew her out of a gray world in which she often sits and cries or picks at invisible things on her pants. He coaxed her into daylight and gave her a moment of pure joy. Emma in turn saved Cinnamon from tumbling off the bed and told him he was safe now.

That’s all either of them needed.