A musician friend of mine is in a physical rehab center recovering from hip surgery. He fell a few weeks after losing his wife of 60 years. She had dementia in her final years. My friend said they drew even closer as she neared death. When she became increasingly unresponsive, he got out his guitar and played music for her.
They both grew up in the 1950s, coming of age about the time Elvis Presley began his reign as the King. When my friend played “Love Me Tender,” there was a hint of a smile. Her smile widened when he sped things up with “Teddy Bear.” The show stopper was “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog.” That one produced a full-on belly laugh. These moments were brief because she tired easily. But it proved yet again that the healing power of music is real.
I thought back to my mother, whose memory began failing in her early 80s and was pretty much gone by the time she turned 90. She still remembered my sisters and me, and thanks to her never-wavering good disposition, she would act like she remembered you too.
After church on Sundays, I would take her to the nearest Shoney’s or Western Sizzlin and we always listened to music in the car. She was 36 when I was born, so I had little to no knowledge of her life before middle age. I knew she loved music from church and could sing hymns without looking at the song book well into her forgetful years.
What I discovered on those Sunday car rides was a revelation. It turns out my elderly mom was just like me. She still loved the songs she heard on the radio when she was young. I don’t know if she listened to the radio while she was cleaning house, or if music provided a background distraction at the hosiery mill where she worked. But somehow those songs stuck with her. And unlike me, she must have really, really listened to the words.
By then, I had subscribed to satellite radio primarily to listen to commercial-free music during our family road trips. We would switch between the channels that played the 60s and 70s music my wife and I grew up with, and the more current channels that played my kids’ favorites. My Sunday drives with Mom became far more entertaining and memorable when I played the 1940s channel. Suddenly, this ailing, elderly woman was transported back to her youth.
With Mom in 2010
Sometimes she would just sway back and forth to a big band instrumental like “You Made Me Love You” by Harry James. Or she would sing along to a simple song that most anyone would know, like “You Are My Sunshine” by Jimmie Davis or “Chattanooga Choo Choo” by Glenn Miller.
But what happened next blew my mind. Dinah Shore’s 1948 hit “Buttons and Bows” came on the radio. I had never heard it. The lyrics are all over the place. It’s a bit of a tongue twister. A sample line went, “Let’s go where I’ll keep on wearin’ those frills and flowers and buttons and bows, rings and things and buttons and bows.”
My sweet mother, who would tend to repeat herself every couple of minutes, and had no idea we were in church ten minutes earlier, could sing EVERY word of “Buttons and Bows.” While doing so, her eyes got brighter, and she seemed 50 years younger. We would repeat this little routine, week after week, as long as she was able. Music provided the relief that doctors and medicine could not.
With any luck, someday my sons will be carting me to my favorite buffet, and “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees will come on the radio. I doubt I’ll be singing along though, because I don’t know the words. Or maybe, somewhere deep inside, I actually do.
