Ed arrived a few minutes late to find us in full-force crowd patter as we set up gear, and was incorporated right into it. It pushed all the buttons I thought it would-- body language, skin color, muscle tone, pain level, all improved as he was wheeled up to our spot through the folks we were entertaining. We just shoved his mandolin into his hands, plunked his open music binder in front of him, and off we went just as if it were any other gig or Saturday Night.

For our most recent similar "gig," each of us would be flipping through songs and jokes to find the next one to take the lead on, as the other two of us did one. We repeated that structure this time and thus the fun never even paused for a moment. I also got the activities staff to hand around their box of rhythm instruments; man, did they shake!

After an intense and upbeat 45 minutes of Melody Lane hits punctuated by familiar, sweet hymns-- all of which the people sang with us-- and a couple of blues numbers and fiddle tunes from Hardi, we let them go on to their dinner prep. It's great to see the people who had been nearly motionless, with flat affect, depart joking and tapping their toes in their chairs. And it's always great to see Alzheimer's patients respond to old songs they can recall perfectly, and how the staff react to that.

Ed stayed to visit with us for just a few minutes, but by focusing as we had on "doing a gig," all the other concernes about what will be happening next vanished into insignificance. We just didn't go there, and neither did Ed or Edith.

The music did the job and set the boundaries where they belonged. There was just no need to deal with the rest, as has so often fallen to us to try to straighten out. (They and the kids will ask us to intervene in family plans, and then whatever we put together will fall apart, and it's so frustrating....) This way, we just stuck with our bond in music; that made SO much sense that we're going to try our best to stick with that as our primary relationship. For the rest, what will happen will happen, but it doesn't have to stop the music.

The activities person wanted to book us again, and I pointed out that Ed is there ALL the time, and that we had left his instruments, joke books, and songbooks there. She'll pick up the slack and make good use of him, I am sure, and we will go back-- but as his side-players.

~Susan