# Not until it cries

- Teacher: Ajahn Brahm
- Type: Joke
- URL: https://beingmindfulstories.com/stories/brahm-joke-65-year-old-mother-lost-baby
- Themes: humour, ageing, denial
- Life situations: ageing, late parenthood

## Synopsis (editorial summary)

A wealthy 65-year-old career woman, never married, has a baby through a fertility clinic. Friends visit to see the baby; she keeps saying 'not yet' over cups of tea and biscuits. Why not? 'You can't see the baby until it starts crying — because I've forgotten where I put it.'

## The story, as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

this 65y old girl you know she she never got married married and so she was a business career woman and now getting to the end of her life she realized she'd missed something in life and I was having a child and being quite wealthy she went to this a very expensive doctor in a gynecologist who referred her to a fertility clinic had got a sperm donor and it's amazing what medic Med medicine can do these days she actually conceived and gave birth to a healthy baby at 65 years of age amazing isn't it and once she came back home from hospital and her friends this is a joke by the way when she came home from the doctor but there's a point to the joke when she came home of course her friends and her relations came to visit her and had a cup of tea and said no we've come to see the baby and she said not yet so they had a cup of tea and after they finished a cup of tea and can we see the baby now not yet said the 65 old so I had another cup of tea and a biscuit and said can we see the baby now she said not yet I said why not yet said oh you can't see the baby until it starts crying why they said because I've forgotten where I put it

## Teaching point

A joke about denial of ageing — get real about where you are in life.

## Reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

A mother of sixty-five tells visitors they can't see her new baby until it cries; she's forgotten where she put it. After the laugh, Ajahn Brahm gets real. He takes funerals for people of every age, and what matters is not how long a life lasted but how well it was lived. Make today's years good ones.

## Source

- [Get Real | Ajahn Brahm | 12-06-2009](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1o51NPCk-U) (Buddhist Society of Western Australia) — watch from 28:23 to 29:54: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1o51NPCk-U&t=1703s