A Facebook friend posted this thought: “You don’t need to “orient” the elderly, even if they have dementia. Spend time with them where they are at … even if it’s 1959. Ask them about what they do remember.” To which I responded:
“When my grandmother was going through that phase, where she couldn’t remember things even a few minutes after they happened, I had this thought: Old people get to that phase so they can pass their knowledge and wisdom and stories from long long ago onto to the next generation. She could remember the name of her four-year-old best friend, but she couldn’t remember what she had for breakfast that morning. So I asked her about her four-year-old neighbor and her childhood and the first time she saw an airplane. I learned how to fillet a fish. I played endless hours of cribbage and listened to stories and got to ask questions and watch her face light up as she remembered things she hadn’t thought of in decades. I spent months going through the years of 1920 to 1990 with her, looking at old photo albums, making video and audio recordings. She talked about those memories and photos as if the events captured had happened yesterday. Because to her, they probably had. It was an amazing experience.
As a result my children have heard and know more “Grandma stories” than my father, her eldest son. I’m grateful I took the time to listen about yesterday, instead of trying to force her into today.”
Tag Archives: oral history
When The Messenger Gets The Greater Gift: Revolutionary ConTEXTing Free Verse Poem
God knew
what He was doing
when He called me
to be a messenger
of His and her love.
Old, not forgotten father
got sweet gifts of kosher
home-canned plums in apple juice.
And candy.
He knows she loves him.
But how often can a guy who loves
Ella’s scatting,
the Duke,
the Dizz,
who gets Misty to Sarah Vaughn,
who channels Satchmo,
get to talk to a Mensch
who hung out with them in Philly,
when he was the only white guy in the club
where they played
for the love of that music?
That sound?
To touch the past like that,
to hear those notes
through his vocal telling,
yes,
through that time machine,
I got the greater gift.
Just like He knew I would.
Philly Memories Of A Jazz Lover: Oral History Prose
I was talking to a friend’s father, a resident at a Jewish senior center in Florida, about his life. During our walk, we heard some jazz through the intercom. As we sat in the sun room, he started telling me about his younger days in Philadelphia. These are his words (with “my comments” inserted), as close as I can recall:
Hearing Jazz in Philly
“I remember going to a club off of Walnut, and you had to go downstairs. We were sitting there, and the side door opened and they had a guy by the arm. They walked him out, brought him to the raised stage and took him up the stairs, and they put his hand on the keyboard and left him. And he sat down and started playing. From then on he owned the place. It was George Shearing. THAT was music.
Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, I saw them together and separately. They were amazing.
The guy with a different-shaped horn … “Dizzy Gillespie?” Yeah, the Dizz. There was a block of houses in West Philadelphia, and they tore out the center of the block, and he played there. That was a great sound.
Philadelphia was where that jazz happened, even more than New York. They loved to play there, and they just did it for the love… Oh,what music!
The guy with the handkerchief … “Satchmo!?!” Yeah Satchmo. Louie Armstrong, what a trumpet player! He wasn’t known as a singer, but could he play! And the Dizz … when he played, his neck and cheeks bulged out and he would force those notes out through the front, just willed it out.
And Sarah Vaughan… Beautiful! She could sing. And I would be the only white guy there, 2-3 times a week I’d be at the clubs, and they all knew me because I loved — we all loved — the music. Stan Kenton, I saw him. Benny Goodman. Except for his band, we didn’t dance at these places. They were small … and just made for listening.
They would play in the clubs until closing, or we’d go to the Boyd Theater at 11, until 1 or 2 in the morning. Then they’d come off the stage and we’d talk to them, then we’d all go to some bar or someplace and they’d set up and play until 5 or 6 in the morning. That was just for the love of the music! Now you have all these musicians, they have no talent, they just perform for the money. But back then, you could see it, and feel it, they would just play until the early morning because they loved making that sound! That music!
They would all talk to me, I knew them all. I was the only white guy in the place, but they knew I loved that sound. They don’t play like that for the love anymore. And it’s too bad.”