THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994 TAG: 9406120068
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Elizabeth Simpson
DATELINE: 940612 LENGTH: Medium
Even after a hard day at work, even if she had a special supper planned. When the weather was lousy, and when it was so nice she would have rather been outside. It didn't matter. Every day she would go by her mother-in-law's nursing-home room to talk. For two hours.
{REST} She would tell Ida Byers what the neighbors were doing. About how she had rearranged the living room furniture. About what she was cooking for supper.
And every day, Zink would get the same response from her mother-in-law: None.
Not a word. Not the blink of an eye. Or the nod of her head. Byers would lie curled up in a fetal position in a bed made especially for people in comalike conditions. Her unfocused eyes gave no indication she even knew anyone was there.
Zink knew Byers might never awaken from the silence she had settled into after a stroke she suffered in January 1993, several weeks after surgery for a brain aneurysm.
Still, Zink came. ``Some day you're going to wake up and say, `Will you shut up?' '' she would tell Byers. Likewise, Byers' son, Clifford Zink, would visit his mother every day at lunch to carry on a one-sided conversation. And so it went month by month until almost a year had passed without Byers saying a word.
And then one January day, the Zinks were sitting in Byers' room when they heard a noise. ``Did you say something?'' Clifford asked Maria. ``No,'' she responded, ``Did you?''
During the next weeks, Maria Zink would hear a murmur of a ``yes'' from Byers. She noticed Byers' eyes following people. She'd see a finger move. Maria Zink would ask a nurse's aide if she had heard Byers say anything, but no one had.
Finally one day, Maria Zink said to Byers, ``You know, you're making a liar out of me. You say little things when I'm here. What am I, someone special?''
``You are to me,'' Byers said.
It was one of the first things Byers remembers saying after a yearlong memory gap. The last thing she remembered was checking into the hospital for surgery. Then, these distant conversations with her son and daughter-in-law that slowly came into focus.
Byers, now 67, gradually got her speech back. She went from bed to wheelchair. And soon, the woman who was wheeled into Hill Haven nursing home a year ago with little to no prospect of moving out, was making plans to go home.
``It was like a chicken coming out of an egg,'' Clifford Zink said.
No, this doesn't qualify as a medical miracle. And yes, lots of people move into nursing homes and go back home again. And yes, there are people who stick by family with the same devotion that Maria and Clifford showed.
But Byers' story pays tribute to people who keep the faith. Which one of us wouldn't have become discouraged after several months and started to cut those two-hour visits a little short?
Byers, at home since April, is learning to walk again. ``Maybe this will help a lot of people who have lost hope,'' she said. She attributes her comeback to family, determination and a higher power.
``It had to be Jesus, honey,'' she said. ``He wasn't ready to let me go.''
by CNB