We recently celebrated Mom’s 87th birthday.  Such a wonderful day despite the April showers.  Before the party, we were lucky to find a couple of fun photos from the past —

and continued the process of documenting her life. The photo to the left is Mom around age 2.  Looking forward to scanning more images as we continue to go through old scrapbooks and boxes of memorabilia that have been in storage for a long while.

We are anxiously looking forward to the weather warming up a little more and being able to take Mom outside to enjoy a few sunsets and dinner outside.  She says she’s looking forward to sitting outside for a while too and looking at the mountains, the fruit trees and wild roses that grow along the fence line.

We are grateful she still has her “voice,” her smile and twinkle in her eyes.  Her doctors are pleased with how well she is doing overall… and she’s been relatively healthy (knocking on wood) since early February.

She still enjoys music, watching old musicals and movies from the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and 60’s.  She prefers to just sit with her sunglasses on (her eyes are really sensitive to light) and listen to whatever her choice has been for the moment … she’ll tap to the beat of the music, try to sing along to the song with the lyrics she remembers.  Regardless, there’s always a smile that greets us even on a bad day.

It’s difficult at times to come here and document what’s happening…. but we are ever grateful for this opportunity to be caregivers and share this space with Mom.  She’s such a wonderful example of living with grace — we’re are truly blessed!

It’s been a while but we’re still here.

We’ve always known that music has soothed Mom’s anxiety.  Today when the power went out, she was a bit anxious.  Grateful for the hotspot  and having some of Mom’s favorite music in the queue.  She listened for nearly 2 hours….  smiles and tapping of toes, keeping time with her hands and finally, a brief nap while the tunes continued to play.

Tunes from the 40s, 50s and early 60s seem to bring joy to her.  So we’ve found several channels on Google music that she loves to listen to. She doesn’t like to wear headphones so we just turn up the volume a bit.

There have been several studies shared recently regarding music and Alzheimer’s patients.  The overall results indicate that music can be beneficial, especially when the music is something the patient can relate to.  I have to agree.  Mom loves musicals, the old standards and the big band era kind of music as well as classical and some opera.  She can’t always remember the artist or the name of the tune, but we’ve heard her singing along and she’s definitely able to keep time with the beat.

There’s joy in every note —

 

On a side note:  Mom’s eyes are very sensitive to light due to some of the meds she’s taking.  So she wears her “glasses” nearly all of the time. And we’ve fully transitioned to pallative care…  Every day brings new challenges for her and for us as her caregivers.  Mobility is our biggest concern at this point.  Her ability to walk has once again declined.

We are grateful for each moment we have to spend with her and treasure each.