This afternoon I spent about two hours with my grandpa. This the longest amount of time I have had the opportunity to spend with him at one time in a long time. He suffers from alzheimer's disease and my family very recently has had to make the heart breaking decision to place him in a memory center.He unlike most of the other residents is blessed to have a family member visit him almost everyday. After school I had an overwhelming urge to go see him on my own, something I hadn’t done before.

When I arrived to visit him I was told he was having a rough day and has upset. I greeted him and remind him who I was, “Hi grandpa, I’m your granddaughter Brooklynn.”. He responded pretending this was an obvious fact to him even though I was more than aware he wasn’t quite sure who I was. We went in his room he immediately sat on the edge of his bed and patted his hand, showing me  where he wanted me sit by him. We faced the window and looked out at his birdfeeder my grandma got him. The bird feeder was literally  overflowing with ordinary little brown bird. “Aren’t they so cool?” my grandpa asked me.

We sat and  watched the birds fly to and from the birdfeeder for easily 45 minutes together. My grandpa kept asking me if I liked the birds, and telling me how special he thought they were. Sitting and watching birds for 45 minutes is something I would never want to do with my time on  my own. Why would I? They were just boring little brown birds. But to my grandpa a man whose mind is becoming more  and more confused, and in result his thoughts less and less complex, these birds were simply incredible. He smiles and become overjoyed watching  the way they cling together and flew in unison when they feel a gust of wind, or squeeze together fitting as many on the feeder as possible. The birds traveled as unit and took care of one another. I would have never noticed how simply incredible the nature of the birds was without my grandfather. Ordinary little brown birds.