Please note that exploring the following material is entirely optional!


​The Power of Music
 
Here is a quote from Sally Magnusson, Scottish broadcaster and author of the book about her mother, Where Memories Go:
 
The Irving Berlin song 'It's a lovely Day Tomorrow' became our family anthem, because with this disease tomorrow often can be a lovely day even if today is not. Flashes of her lovely personality remained and could be nurtured. 'This is the best day of my life' she would enthuse regularly…… This is an important lesson I learned about dementia. If people can be helped towards living rather than dying, if they can be cherished as long as possible within a family or community, honoured as individuals instead of treated as less than human, they can flourish for longer than we might imagine.

(To find out more about the book, click on the picture.)
 
Picture
Is your care home such a community?

​Are the creative activities you are involved in with the resident helping them to be cherished?
 ​
Sally Magnusson sees music as an essential part of this process. She says 'Music is what rescues you from silence'. She is a supporter of a national scheme called 'Playlist for Life' to bring people's individual choice of music to everyone with dementia. Click on the logo to find out more about this venture. 
SHARE A VERSE
 
Here's something for you to try - below you will find a number of very short poems.

Choose one or two you like, memorise them, then say them to people on the unit.

What reactions do you get? Have fun!
                                     
What are heavy? Sea-sand and sorrow.
What are brief? Today and tomorrow.
What are frail? Springblossoms and youth.
What are deep? The oceans and truth.

(What are Heavy? by Christina Rossetti
 
May sleep enchant you
And hold you in her arms and grant you
A night without waking.

​(A Charm by Robert Nye)
There are holes in the sky
Where the rain gets in
But they're ever so small
That's why rain is so thin.
 
(Holes by Spike Milligan)
There are three things that only God knows;
the beginning of things;
the cause of things;
and the end of things.
 
(Welsh Proverb)
There was a monkey sat up a tree;
That tree it was a Monkey Puzzle;
And now I wonder which it could be:
Whether the monkey puzzled the tree
Or whether the tree puzzled the monkey.

(John)
Hold onto what is good
even if it's a handful of earth.
Hold onto my hand
even when I've gone away from you.
 
(Hopi Prayer)
All that we need to do,
Be we low or high,
Is to see that we grow
Nearer the sky.
 
(A Little Song by Lizette Rees)
God in his wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.
 
(The Fly by Ogden Nash)
Time flies. Suns rise
And shadows fall.
Let time go by.
Love is forever over all.
 
(Poet Unknown)