Every couple of months I grab my guitar (and sometimes the banjo) and lead a "sing-a-long' with the residents at my father's assisted living facility. It is always a sweet hour, watching the faces of many who have lost large portions of their memories to dementia and Alzheimers, be brought back to happier times through these old folk songs. Music has a way of retaining its integrity in the soul that seems more durable than events with no rhythm or melody.
There was one woman in particular who, today, seemed particularly touched by my songs. She would smile, shake her head, and say, "I wish my son were here! He used to play all of these songs! I'll have to tell him to come down here and listen to this. He used to know all of these songs." I asked her if there was one in particular that she would like to hear in honor of her son. She replied, "No, no, it is just all of them. He'd play all of them." So we did Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" in his honor.
After getting my dad settled back in his room, I just happened to run into this woman on her way to the dining room... with her son. I shook his hand and asked him if he was still playing music. He glanced down at his mother, with so much love it was palpable, and said, "No, that was my dad. My dad used to play the guitar and the banjo and the harmonica, and even the squeezebox. He used to know all of those old folk songs." Mom didn't seem to notice that there was any discrepancy in the story. She was still smiling and remembering. Remembering those folk songs.
I wondered in that moment where we keep our loved ones. For this woman, her son and her husband occupied the same space in her heart. They were the same. They were simply loved. I am well aware that at a certain point, even those memories fade; leaving a person with no memories. But I think that we can rest assured that we are still there, in the soul; that behind those eyes that no longer recognize, there are loved ones - playing, smiling, laughing, crying, perhaps singing a folk song, linked forever in that part of us that is all too human; the part of us that loves.
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