Music

Do you respond differently to music today than when you were young?  The Time Goes By blog devotes their Sunday column each week to the subject so I'm assuming it's a subject of great interest among aging Americans.

I'm finding there are a number of things that are necessary for the health and well being of the aging, music being only one.  Touch and affection are subjects seldom addressed but today I'm writing about music.

An phone call on Saturday set me to thinking about music and its importance.  I received a phone call from a sister-in-law going through the grief process.  In the 53 years we've been together I have never known her to cry.  When I answered the phone she was sobbing.  As soon as she began talking I knew what she'd done.  She'd put on music from the days she was young and dating her husband.  One song, one she loved, had tripped her over the edge into sobs.

I've known at least three times when music was played at the bedside of a dying person.  Hmmmmm

Please don't do that to me.  I get it that music is important.  What I don't get is just how important.  If I want some music to exercise with I'll choose it.  The same if I want soft music playing while I relax.  Please don't choose for me.

This reminds me of an experience when I was the legal guardian of a nursing home patient in a vegetative state.  It was decided a radio playing on her bedside table would be good.  Not my decision but I did not oppose it until I discovered the Hispanic aids were listening to a fast paced Mexican radio station and leaving it on that station when they were finished and left the room.  I could just imagine myself in a vegetative state being forced to listen to that jiving music hours on end.  No thanks.

I think music is very personal and care should be given to selecting what's appropriate.  Personally, I'm instructing my family to set the dial for a news broadcast.

How do you feel about music, and are you more affected by it today than when you were young?