Music, Memories, and Hope
By Gene Aronowitz
Thompson House, an excellent nursing home that closed in mid-2023, was located on the grounds of Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck, New York. This facility was home to many residents, including my wife Linda’s late mother. Once a month, from October 2018 to March 2020, when COVID prevented us from entering the building, Linda and I provided a program we called “Music and Memories.” Some of the residents suffered from dementia. Even for them, music can serve as a bridge to the past, awakening emotions and memories that other forms of communication cannot.
For about half an hour, while the residents were brought into the program room in their wheelchairs, I played some familiar folk, campfire, and spiritual songs on my harmonica. When all were assembled, we played recordings of four or five popular songs from when most of the residents were teenagers. Before each recording, Linda talked about the meaning of the song’s lyrics. We did this, of course, to help the residents recall significant events in the lives they led before they became incapacitated. If there was time, we would do some sing-alongs, which I accompanied on my baritone ukulele. Then we would end the session playing a rousing Louis Armstrong recording of “When You’re Smiling,”. hoping that when they returned to their rooms, they would do so with smiles on their faces. (Footnote: The version of “When You’re Smiling,” we used can be found on the album “King Louis,” a compilation album recorded by Louis Armstrong and the All Stars, released by Verve Records in 1962)
The song’s lyrics suggest that if people are smiling and laughing, others around them will also smile and laugh because these expressions of emotion can be contagious. The lyrics further suggest that crying and sighing can be disheartening to those around them.
We hoped that our efforts would bring pleasure and joy to the residents' lives. Furthermore, we expected that those emotions might extend well beyond the session, so that they might even perceive their stay at the nursing home as a positive experience. Most people think that being in a nursing home is undesirable, and caretaking children often feel guilty if they have arranged for their parents to be placed in a facility. Yet, a good nursing home can be just what is needed to manage a deteriorating condition.
Linda and I tried month after month to convey that the residents could choose how they perceived their time in the nursing home. It probably wasn't how they initially wanted their lives to turn out, but we thought they could be helped to understand that they could be worse off with much less support.
Seeing the positives in their day-to-day existence is not only applicable to nursing home residents, but to all of us as well. We live in precarious times, but if we work at it, we can choose how we perceive what's happening in our world, our country, and our immediate surroundings. It’s not easy, but if we imagine our worst fears to be resolvable, maybe they will be.
A version of this memoir is included in the book 23 More Memoirs.