Mom Told Coma Daughter Jokes for 5 Years. She Laughed Back

For nearly five years, Peggy Means showed up at the hospital to tell jokes to her daughter in a coma. One day in August 2022, Jennifer Flewellen finally laughed back.

Jennifer crashed into a utility pole in September 2017 while driving her three sons to school near Niles, Michigan. Her heart stopped at the scene, and paramedics revived her on the fourth attempt, but the brain damage was severe.

Doctors delivered the same prognosis repeatedly: Jennifer would never wake up, and if she somehow did, nothing would remain of the person her family knew. Peggy refused to accept it.

The decision cost her nearly everything. Friends stopped visiting, and her husband moved on with his life. But Peggy kept coming, almost every day, talking to her daughter and telling her jokes like she always had.

Then came the moment that changed everything. Peggy was walking Jennifer along a hospital path, telling a joke, when Jennifer laughed out loud.

"When she woke up, it scared me at first because she was laughing, and she had never done that," Peggy told People. "That door that was closed, that kept us apart, had just opened."

Dr. Ralph Wang at Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital called Jennifer's recovery genuinely rare. Only a small fraction of long-coma patients ever achieve what she has.

The laugh started a long, hard climb back. Hospital staff resisted when Peggy pushed for speech therapy, thinking she was unrealistic. Jennifer couldn't make sounds at first, so she learned to push air through a tiny whistle, then slowly shaped vowels.

One Christmas, Peggy gave her a kitten named Huey. "Because it was vowels," she said with a grin.

Sunny's Take

The hardest part wasn't the silence or the slow progress. It was the time Jennifer lost with her boys.

Julian was 11 when his mom crashed. His brothers, Skylar and Daeton, graduated high school while she slept. When Jennifer finally woke, she found her children nearly grown.

"I told her I was Juju, and her eyes lit up like, 'Wow, it's my Juju bean,'" Julian said, using his childhood nickname. The reunion carried grief alongside joy.

Jennifer is home now in the house where she grew up, though she still can't walk and needs help with daily tasks. Last October, she made it to Julian's senior-night football game at Niles High School.

"She was my biggest supporter," he said. "To have my biggest supporter back on the sidelines cheering me on was a surreal moment."

Peggy brushed the hair from her daughter's face and summed up five years in six words: "Where there's life, there's hope."