THE AWAKENING: From the Washington Post. Heart-rending; this is only a tiny snippet.

“Are you glad to see me?” Pat would say. “Look at that smile. Now relax your arm. Relax, sweetheart. Say, my name is Sarah. Say, I’m hungry. Say, I’m thirsty. Say, I want to eat. I want to talk. Are you ready to talk? Yes, you are ready to talk.”

Sarah would blink. And deep inside that face in which others saw only blank stares, Pat Rincon saw a flicker. …

When Sarah started talking, they asked her where she had been, what she remembered.

Somebody asked her how old she was.

“I’m 18,” her brother, Jim, recalls her trying to say.

“You are not 18, Sarah,” he told her.

So she conceded: “I’m 22.”

“No, you are 38.”

But Sarah insisted she was 22.

“She missed a long time,” her dad says. “She missed delightful periods of her life. I said if she wants to be 22, let her be 22.”

In May, Sarah turned 39.

Her mother asked if she was aware of 9/11.

“I said, do you know about New York? She said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘Airplanes. Buildings. Smoke.’ I said, ‘Anything else?’ She said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Do you know about Oklahoma City?’ She said, ‘Children. Hospitals.’ “

People assumed she knew about them because her television was on, imprinting images in her brain.

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via The Corner.