Pamela's latest interest is 'mindfulness'. I looked it up. I found this:

Mindfulness ...

• Is simply about paying attention and coming into the present moment. This means that you can begin to experience your life with exquisite vividness.

I thought of my own mild brain injury. That summed up what the recovery period felt like. Cognition had taken a back seat.  I had no history, no future, I lived precisely in the moment. It was amazing. At times almost euphoric in intensity. Until the outside world crashed in. I remember the phone call "Judy, I have been speaking to Daphne. We feel it is best if we don't combine lifts any more. The boys have had two late marks. We will take them to school ourselves."

Now; the feeling was not euphoric. It was desolation. "Please please don't take this away from me too".

Taking and fetching the boys to and from school was my only responsibility in this cocooned state.

I think Henry, after his catastrophic brain hemorrhage is in the same period of recovery. His cognition was for many many months almost non existent. His brain, probably for its own recovery of stamina, is practising mindfulness for him. He exists 'in the minute'. He will eat the grapes I take him with such enthusiasm. It's very pleasing as a visitor to see such exquisite enjoyment of such a simple pleasure. Remember his music therapy comment "I can't believe I'm so good at this". Then the world comes crashing in.

He tells me his new grand daughter's second name is "Mary". It triggers a more distant memory. Cognition takes over from mindfulness, which is a good sign for brain function recovery, but a painful recognition of incapacity. He looks me in the eye and asks me the same question he has asked on my visits for the last year "Am I right in thinking that my Mary has died?"

His Mary. The one he cared for unstintingly throughout her decline into dementia. Probably 10 years of increasing responsibility for her daily life. She died shortly after his brain hemorrhage. He was then without mindfulness or cognition. Only now is cognition competing with mindfulness.

His love for Mary needs a cognitive framework.

Funny how people without brain injury are trying to go in the opposite direction. They are learning to abandon cognition and experience the 'here and now' more intensely.

Funny old world!