Singing Along, Singing Our Song and Making a Difference

“What’s the score?”

Thet was the question on all of our minds Wedsnesday evening October 15 as the KC Royals played the fourth playoff game with the Baltimore Orioles. For months, we’d been scheduled to present an Alzheimer’s program at this church, A Music Lesson in the Art of Love, with singer Cynthia Schroer and guitarist Rod Fleeman. But our baseball team’s wild, wonderful, and unexpected success was taking precedence that evening.

The preacher looked at his cell phone.

“The score is 2-1 KC in the bottom of the ninth,” the preacher said.”We are two outs away from being in the World Series.”

All 20 of us crowded closer and the preacher gave us a play-by-play of the proceedings. When the Royals won, we all cheered and applauded and Rod led us in a rousing version of Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

After our jubilation abated, we settled in to do our program, a combination of songs and stories that focused on the gifts and blessings in the caregiver’s journey.

Cynthia and Rod are remarkable musicians and I wanted to share one of their songs with you. Click here to listen.

I also wanted to share an article about three people who are really making a difference using music. This article from Unity Magazine features the inspiring stories of Dan Cohen from Music and Memory, Janalea Hoffman from Rhythmic Medicine, and Richard Mekdici from Posi Music.  Click here to tune into it. 

Here’s to singing along, singing our song, and making a difference.IMG_2232

 

Deborah Shouse is the author of Love in the Land of Dementia: Finding Hope in the Caregiver’s Journey.

6 Comments

  1. candy on October 21, 2014 at 10:30 am

    This blog reminds me that I was driving to a meeting and missing the game on TV. Such as life when I got to the meeting only to realize that I had the wrong day! Sigh…
    Candy

  2. Me on October 23, 2014 at 12:27 am

    What a great story !!! And what a lovely voice Cynthia has – that was a beautiful song !!!

    • deborahshousewrites on October 23, 2014 at 11:18 pm

      I love the combination of music and story and Cynthia and Rod are amazing musicians.

  3. Kate A. on October 23, 2014 at 5:32 pm

    Deborah – have you seen the lectures available from the Room 217 Foundation on music care? Dan Cohen did one on September 10. http://www.room217.ca/music-care-webinars (I’m going to one of their day long workshops this Saturday – so excited!!!)

    • deborahshousewrites on October 23, 2014 at 11:16 pm

      Thanks so much for this information. I would love to hear about the workshop.
      I am going to listen to some of the webinars–they sound wonderful!

      • Kate A. on October 25, 2014 at 10:47 pm

        Back from the workshop a few hours ago and it was quite inspiring. The dementia session with Robin Rio focused a lot more on using live music and interacting with instruments/voices/sound (familiar and also improvised) rather than something like the ipod approach of Music and Memory – she has a webinar coming up in the new year on Room 217. They also had a fascinating lecture on music and Parkinsons with various Alberta based universities and using a system called Ambulosono to improve gait and movement – they’re also working on how that might work for dementia patients. I want to back and listen to Bev Foster’s lecture on Dementia – she spoke quite a bit today and is absolutely delightful. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else 🙂

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