It is not repaired.

It is functioning.

I have come to think those are different things and that the second one is available far more often.

Chapter 13 — The Second Note

My mother is seventy-eight.

It has been seven years since the stroke, and what she has is a dense expressive aphasia — she knows exactly what she means and cannot get it into words.

She understands everything said to her.

She can produce maybe forty words reliably and they are rarely the ones she is reaching for.