Music Therapy

After writing about diabetes for a week, I wanted to spend a week on dementia. It is getting a little late in the day.

I had been feeling pretty good about having had two weeks of consistent blogging, with posts on all three blogs on the appropriate days and new bands reviewed and all of that. I would like to keep it up, but I don't know if I can. Maybe this week will explain more why.

However, today I want to write about one thing that is going pretty well, only possibly not. That kind of ambiguity comes up all the time with dementia.

My mother has always enjoyed music, and songs she has strong relationships with elicit more of a response. I checked the Three Tenors concert DVD out from the library, thinking she would like it. She loved it.

Beyond that, she especially loved certain parts of it, and I started realizing that the music that resonates most for her are songs that her father sang and loved. He sang all the time, possibly with more spirit than skill, so family resemblances are a thing.

He loved opera, especially Verdi, but also other classic Italian songs and songs that were popular when my mother was young. I have played some opera that is pretty but wasn't so much his. She likes it, but the songs that he liked touch a certain chord. She connects to it in a special way.

That's good, right? Probably.

She often gets teary-eyed listening to it. That could be a concern, but I think they are happy tears. Also, it connects her more to Italy.

It has been a while now that she has not believed this is home, but she used to think her home was somewhere nearer. It is now more frequent that she is remembering the home she grew up in.

That could actually be an improvement. When she had a place in mind that didn't exist, we could never take her there; her childhood home still exists, and is inhabited by her nephew and his wife. It looks different now, and it would probably only feel like home for a minute, and it would take a lot to get there, but it exists. Mainly it matters now that she is remembering home is Italy because she frets over having ID, saying that they will ask her for it when she goes home. (The news may not help with that either.)

It would probably be better if I could make her feel more connected to this house and these people, but I still think it helps that there is some connection.

Therefore, I have printed out lyrics and we have started singing, as well as listening. We have mainly been working on "O Sole Mio". She often wakes up with it in her head, not knowing why, and then saying she doesn't know the words when I say we are going to sing it, but she is relying on the lyric sheet less.

Today I just added "Come Prima". I told her when we know ten songs we will throw a concert. She laughed, but it was something she was happy about, and then I knew what to do with her next, and those moments are little miracles.

Then I had to make dinner and she got very restless. I need to leave more little tasks available, I guess. It's hard to plan it all out.

Recently we had a really good music session, I thought, but immediately after wrapping up she said she should be getting home. That felt like a failure, but it's not as simple as that. It never is.

For now I believe it is good for her, so we will keep doing it. Dementia care giving is a lot like improv, except that you are the only one committed to saying "yes". So when there is a definite "yes", you take it.