The other day I wrote about how Alzheimer patients die when they forget how to breathe, and how my experience seems to lead me to remember how to breathe as I never have before.
Speaking with friends, I thought of something I had read: a mother’s recollection of her daughter’s birth, and of the eerie silence that continued for a full minute before her child drew a breath and began to cry. As I spoke to my friends, I realized that we are all remembering how to breathe as we never have before, from the very start.