Have you ever felt as looney as a tune? We did. All the time! Mom, Eric and I made a fine looney tune trio, especially when we were unplugged.
Here’s an excerpt from Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter (and mother!), which we also sang accompanied by piano. This particular post is to honour my birthday January 28, 1956, which this year I will be marking for the first time ever without my mom in this world. That’s something to think and feel about.
Oh yeah, and just for fun and because Mom would have loved it:
December 2016: This Christmas will be difficult for me – the first one without Mom since spending special times together from 2005 to 2015, and so many more growing up and in young adulthood. I’m grateful to have this and other video recordings that clearly show that love, music, connection and compassion enable people who live with dementia to engage life well into the later stages of the disease. If you celebrate at this time of year, I invite you to see the hearts and souls beyond the disease and to support people who live with dementia by including them without reservation in the circle of your life.
Flashback December 2014: Christmas is around the corner and Mom, Eric and I are singing Yuletide tunes as part of our weekly healing music session. Here’s “Gloria” as a way to kick off the festive season:
#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */
Subscribe to MAS now & get 5 free PDFs & a page of welcome links:
Email Address
//s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.mailchimp.com/js/mc-validate.js(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);
Flashback December 22, 2014: This video includes 1) a little bit of Tiny Tim (Tiptoe through the Tulips), 2) a duet “When You Wore a Tulip,” and 3) some Roses are Red poetry in which Mom does a bit of narcissistic rhyming.
December 26, 2014: It’s blowing a gale here on Boxing Day after two days of rain. Sadly, much of the snow is gone. Nevertheless, it’s not like a seaside cottage where gossamer curtains billow in a salty breeze, as I imagine is happening in the image above. And the weather here in Quebec was much finer when Mom, Eric and I recorded our skreely everything wishes last week. Then, there was a gentle wind in which we found the answers to some of our questions. We sang about what we knew and felt grateful:
One day in the summer of 2011, Mom, Caroline and I were having a particularly bad day. EVERYTHING seemed to be going wrong. All three of us were sad and down. The day before, my friend Jessica had shared a link to Amazing Grace. A different version.
I put my laptop on the island in the kitchen and cranked up the volume. It wasn’t long before Mom, Caroline and I were singing, clapping and dancing around the kitchen. Mom loved to move. Now she is free to fly. She wouldn’t have wanted us to get too stuck in grief for too long. She would have thrown herself party.
Here’s to my mom’s amazing grace, fierce spirit and sense of fun, with guitar, mandolin, accordion, harmonica, fiddle and horns. Oh yes. Life is meant to be sung and danced. She left this place on August 17, 2016. But even in death, her light shines.
Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now I’m found.
Was blind but now I see.
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Then when we first begun.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I’m found.
Was blind, but now I see.
My Alzheimer's Story 