Take My Picture

My mother is looking forward to her 97th birthday - and to reconnecting with family members who plan to come for the occasion.

Smile, I'm going to take your picture beside these flowers, I tell her when I visited her a few days ago... Unfortunately, she can no longer see the flowers.

She obediently smiles, then closes her eyes... I wonder if she has fallen asleep.

Can you take a picture of me with my mother and grandmother? she suddenly asks.

As I try to understand her request, I wonder if she has been dreaming: Her mother died 50 years ago. Her grandmother 30 years before that.

I wonder... When you lose your sight in old age, like my mother, and can no longer see the world around you... Are your dreams more vivid that reality?

Do you still see the world as you remember it, in your dreams?