AHA – got your attention with that little title right?
I take my Dad to a lecture series at the West End Seniors Centre every Friday. I’ve been taking him for 4 years now. He loves it. They all seem to know his name and he cannot name a single person. Thank you NOT dementia….then again, my father was never very good at remembering names….
This particular series is about the Vikings. They just finished a series about South America. Dad was convinced he had heard very little about the Mayans and the Incans, etc prior to this but that is definitely dementia talking.
He kept repeating “the so called Vikings built the best boats at that time…they were called long boats” when I picked him up. It’s fascinating….he always comes out with one singular memorable item that he then repeats and repeats. For days! And yes, I always am interested and always steer the conversation into more about whatever the topic happens to be.
OOH, should I show him the Vikings: Valhalla series on Netflix?! hmm….it’s a smidge violent…..he liked series like Star Trek Picard and MASH but he never liked violence. Maybe I’ll have him watch the first episode and see what he thinks. I’ll keep you posted! (UPDATE: he’s now seen 5 episodes! and yes, he finds them a bit violent)
And “In The Mood” you ask? Well, last Wednesday we had a fab rehearsal with Forte Plus (they sound terrific!) and really started to “make music” now that our fab pianist is there and I’m free to conduct. But, “In The Mood” didn’t fly well with my Dad. He found it too fast and wasn’t sure he even knew it. When I sang it slowly for him later, he seemed to know it. Can tempos matter that much?
Now that I know he can’t follow his music terribly well anymore but rather just gets stuck looking at it, I feel like I should have seen this coming. So now I have to decide….do I slow down the whole song just for Dad? And the answer is yes, yes I do. We can easily and happily do a heavy slow swing on that piece that will still make it work and make it fun to sing. So why not?! Betcha others won’t mind if I slowed it down a little – lots of words to get over after all. (UPDATE: I took some songs yesterday at a “good clip” and not only was Dad fine, he was great!)
I think I will take the advice of one our readers and just pull out his bass part of some of his “more difficult” songs (in both choirs) to see if that helps him follow more easily. Can’t hurt to try!
Thank you for reading. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your ideas.
One Response
Your thoughts and methods of dealing with your dad’s dementia are interesting and valuable. Let’s face it in a family there will be at least one with dementia. In ours there are 4 who have dementia or Alzheimer’s. Reading this blog tells us that we are not alone on the journey. It gives us encouragement to try things we hadn’t thought of before.
Maybe a book is in your future?