We’re giving our eyes away to our screens — phone, computer, TV. I watched an entire family at a restaurant fixated on their individual phones, the glow of their screens reflecting in their eyes as they retreated to different places, seated together at a table but miles apart. They missed the chance to visit about their day, their victories, their problems with the very group of people they should be most intimately conversant.

We’re giving away our ears to ear buds and headphones. We hesitate to talk to someone sporting one in their ear because, even though we can’t hear someone talking to them, we assume someone is. That tiny electronic plug takes the place of a flesh and blood person, and we’d rudely interrupt if we spoke. So, we don’t, killing a conversation that never begins.

We’re giving away our mouths. This world of political correctness and heightened sensitivity to demands of society’s fringes stilts our conversations. How often do we open our mouths to share an honest opinion, then pause to consider that it just might, maybe, possibly offend someone somewhere, and so we simply leave the thought sizzling in our throats? We hold back rivers of conversation for fear of drops of offense. It’s easier or safer or less complicated to say nothing at all. And so we are silenced.

It’s no wonder we battle loneliness as we live surrounded by unapproachable crowds.

So. My mom, my dear, sweet, 92-year-old mom teaches me.

I visit Mom weekly in her assisted living apartment an hour north of my home. We talk, I take her on a ride, we eat lunch at the facility. Invading dementia is gradually stealing our conversations as she loses thoughts and memories to talk about. I try to push away the growing confusion in her face with my words; it’s a no-win battle.

This past week, after lunch, we returned to her room where I settled her into her recliner for her afternoon nap before I left. This is a weekly ritual. The next thing to happen was not.

As I bent down to carefully hug her fragile body, her hands wrapped fiercely around behind my neck and would not let go. I leaned so far over I feared I would fall on top of her, so I sank to my knees and laid my head against her shoulder. Her arms encircled my shoulders and she silently held me against her neck. A few careful adjustments and Mom’s child was held in her yearning embrace, both arms wrapped around my shoulders with her cheek laid against mine.

The contact was stunning. I felt my body relax, then relax further, even while hers did the same. We “melted” into each other. She turned her head and softly kissed my forehead several times — something she hadn’t done in decades.

It was the purest embrace she and I have ever known. This between two women who, in my growing up years, sometimes fought with real intent. All of that peeled away as I lay there, breathing carefully, immersed in absolute, quiet, contented love. I might be there still if my knees hadn’t given out.

I reluctantly left her when she dozed off into her nap. I’m losing her as she slowly retreats from this life. But our growing lack of ability to converse with words is now replaced. She taught me a new language where we will meet, love, communicate and restore, warmth to warmth, heart to heart, spirit to spirit, where eyes, ears, and words will pale to the strongest of all senses — touch.

This from a frail woman whose whole life belonged to touching others through love and service, and now to a flailing daughter who needed to learn one more lesson from her mom: that our eyes and ears and mouths are not our strongest communication tools. In a pure, powerful way, human touch replaces human noise.

In a sense, it’s a lesson we cannot learn too soon.