Singing with Barbara

This little ditty is sung to the tune of "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes."

"Adieu, adieu, kind friends, adieu
(Yes, adieu)
I can no longer stay with you
(Stay with you)
I will hang my heart on a weeping willow tree
And may the world go well with thee...
(Well with thee)

Fare thee well for I must leave thee
Do not let this parting grieve thee
And remember that the best of friends must part.
(Must part)"

The song must be very old. Friday it came surging through my ninety-one year old mom and I struggled to write down all the words before she ran out of steam.


Glimmers of memory like dust motes in the deep dark forest of my brain tell me I've heard it before from my formerly quick-witted mother who had perfect-pitch and still has a keen sense of rhythm.

Nearly eight years ago mom's brain had an electrical storm which took out her speech center and paralyzed her right side. Since rehab restored very little of her pre-stroke poetic, musicianly, writerly, scholarly self, we, her loving family, have come to accept her as she is. Some days Barbara is out-going and talkative (even if what she says makes little or no sense). She can make us laugh with funny faces or, like on Friday, astound me with the intact lyrics of an old song. Other days she's like a koala bear which sleeps eighteen hours a day… only she’s less fluffy and eats only pureed foods instead of Eucalyptus leaves.

What Barbara has going for her is that right-brain expanded state of consciousness for which many folks shell-out big bucks to learn how to achieve through meditation. Her left brain is Swiss cheese. Her innate sense of melody and beat (right-brain skills) are intact.

I discovered, very soon after her life-altering event, that music is mom’s primal language… but, picking up a thread from last week’s blog, the more intimately she feels the music, the more capacity it has to move her emotionally. Her neurologist told us that anything which causes her to feel emotion is good for her brain. Laughter and tears help to create new synapses.

Once in a while mom’s brother comes to play guitar for her but she rarely sings with him. I sense that her left ear and eye are the stronger ones of each pair and that she has very little acuity of sight or sound perception remaining on the right. So, when Uncle Larry sits in a chair half-way across the room where she has little to zero sensory awareness of his presence she is not moved in the same way she’s moved by my lying next to her in her hospital bed and resting her old guitar against her bony thigh so she can feel the vibration as we sing the old folk songs. Either it’s the proximity that moves her to tears or my inferior playing that makes her cry.

A couple of years ago mom could still sing in English, Hebrew, French and Spanish. She could still remember all the words, melodies and harmonies. Recently the harmonies have begun to fade; likewise her melodic voice and desire to sing at all are dropping away. There is progressive retreating. More Koala Bear traits are coming on. Sometimes we can coax her to sing by starting a line and waiting for her to finish it. Lately, more often than not, she remains silent. While this progression seems natural and inevitable, it makes even more poignant for me the realization that we probably won’t have a whole lot of tomorrows with her.

On Friday, when I was singing “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” with her and she broke into these alternate lyrics I had a rare glimpse into the mysterious workings of her brain. Stimuli are received and unpredictable responses are triggered. What treasures still lie untapped in her cranium? I want to mine all possible veins while she’s at all present. Each day is a gift.
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Saturday, our older daughter and our just-turned-two-year-old-grand-daughter arrived for a four-day visit from Oakland. Monitoring little Devlyn’s comfort level with Barbara’s obvious debility I observed the little one’s initial wariness, exhibited by some clinging to me, some averting of her eyes and she was speechless. This is perhaps their sixth meeting but the first since Devlyn has become so precociously and completely articulate. She speaks clearly in paragraphs, to every one's astonishment. I certainly didn’t push Devlyn to stay in her great-grandmother’s room, but my mom was gripping one of my hands tightly while my other hand was supporting Devlyn on my hip. Is THIS what is meant by “middle age” - caring for the generation on either side of one’s own? (Only in this case it was one generation up, two down as my daughter was not in the room at that moment.) I acknowledged to Devlyn that "Bubelah Barbara" (as my mom is known to all of her grand-children and great-grand-children) needs help with many things.It's hard for her to see and hear, but she likes to be touched. Mercifully, Barbara obliged us with some "doodley-doos" when we sang "Down by the Bay." Devlyn smiled and I could feel her relax in my arms.

In the twenty four intervening hours Devlyn has shown increasing ease with, concern for and curiosity about her great-grandmother. Sunday night, after dinner, Miss Devlyn saw me moving mom’s empty wheelchair back to my office and asked, “Where is Bubelah Barbara sitting?” I told her that Ellen (mom’s amazingly wonderful care-giver) and I had helped Bubelah Barbara back to bed. Devlyn marched right in to see for herself that her great-grandmother was, indeed, there in her electric bed in the old dining room which has become my mom’s room. Miss D likes to push the buttons that raise and lower Bubelah Barbara’s bed. She sits on mom’s bed and touches her leathery skin with inquisitive and supple fingers.

I miss my mom’s pre-stroke personality. I miss conversations with her and singing with her. I wish little Devlyn could have known the animated version of her great-grandma. I'm grateful they got to sing a couple of songs together. I know I’m guilty of reading more between the lines in Friday’s out-pouring of “Adieu, adieu, kind friends, adieu…” than may be there, but memories of my mother’s intelligence lead me to believe that she has knowledge of her precarious state and that the song is a cryptic message.

So, I’ll try to “remember that the best of friends must part.”
(Must part)