Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory –
Percy Bysshe Shelley, English Romantic Poet (1792 – 1822)

People say, watching someone transition
from all knowing, to sporadic dementia,
to full blown Alzheimer’s,
is like watching someone disappear.
It seems to me,
there could be another perspective . . .

She saw our bodies, our faces.
But in her eyes, we were shadows.
In the beginning of the end
the mist would eventually lift.
She’d remember our names,
laugh with us as we reminisced.

But the veil fell and we lost her,
and she lost us.
We no longer existed in her world.
But the music . . . sweet notes, harmony,
songs she loved.
These she kept in her heart.

Some days, we’d find her singing.
Her voice clear and strong.
Her face animated.
We dared not interrupt
lest she stop
and simply stare confused.

She’s gone now, gone from this earth.
In her last days of lying still,
eyes closed, lights dimmed,
unaware of nurses nearby
or family by her side,
occasionally she’d smile.

I have no doubt
angels were hovering nearby,
humming a lullaby only she could hear.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today is Tuesday Poetics and Merril asks us to write a poem about a transition in time we may have experienced or that we’ve thought about. She provides the poetry lines from Percy Bysshe Shelley at the top of my poem, as a bit of inspiration. They made me think about the lasting power of music for those who, for example, suffer from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

I was reminded of Tony Bennett’s last concert with Lady Gaga, when he was suffering from Alzheimer’s. He had trouble remembering many things but as soon as he heard the music of the standby songs he sang and loved for so many years, and was in front of the audience, all the music came back to him. The YouTube video is of him singing at that last concert.

On a more personal note, I learned several days ago that an old college friend of mine recently died. We were sorority sisters and she sang in our college choir and for all these years, in her church choir. Like Tony Bennett, I know from last year’s Christmas letter from her husband, that although her memory problems were increasing, she was still singing in her church choir. At her funeral, which I was able to watch in a recording, the pastor said her life was a song….and he had no doubt, God was singing a lullaby to her in her final days.

** the scene within the poem is fictional