By this time 10 years ago I was becoming a fairly competent CNA. The problem with John, my WW2 pilot and 89 year old stroke victim, trying to bite and hit me had been resolved, as I wrote about awhile back. But John was still pretty much mute and I was never quite sure of how much he understood.

Now a little background on John, or Hans, which was his given name. He was born in a 1920, post WW1 Hamburg, Germany and came to NYC as a child in 1927 only speaking German. Now speaking German between 2 major world wars where they were the bad guys was not real popular in Hoboken, NJ. John went to a Catholic school and the nuns would rap his knuckles with a ruler if they heard him speaking German, so he learned English lickety split. Neither his wife or son had ever heard John utter one single word of German in 60 years.

After hearing this story, one day when starting my shift I just greeted John with a casual 'Auf wiedersehen, Hans!', about the extent of my German remembered from high school. John suddenly perked up and began to speak a bunch of German I did not understand. His wife's jaw almost dropped to the floor.

From then on for the next year I would learn a German phrase per week and practice it until it was perfect. The good part was the stroke made him talk slow so I could understand his answers. John enjoyed it thoroughly and it always calmed him down. One of the other CNAs actually called me at home once to speak some German to John over the phone when he was having one of his fits. When his son came to visit, a college basketball coach at an Ivy League school, seeing his dad respond to German blew him away. After John passed the son wrote a beautiful letter of recommendation that really enabled me to go out and work on my own and get away from the agency and poor pay.

It does make one think on how the brain works. John had not spoken German since he was 6 or 7, and certainly not any in his adult working life. Yet, there is was, alive, deep in his primal brain, ready to be woken. I wonder if it might of been him responding to the native tongue of his mother and somehow getting comfort from hearing it, like a child. Working with dementia and stroke patients was always fascinating that way....