I love to sing. I may have developed that love because both my mother and my father sang. My father sang when he milked the cows which calmed them down. My mother sang around the house and when doing laundry and other chores. She said one can sing to entertain oneself. I grew up in a town of singers. Singing in church and school and on other occasions. My 5th and 6th grade teacher taught what you lack in quality you can make up for in volume and gusto. A man I met and sang with later in life, said that it is hard to stay sad when one is singing, even a sad song. I got in the habit of singing while i milked cows and later drove alone in a car or drove home from work. My wife and I used to duet while driving and we were good together but sadly, I never got a recording of that singing. One day while driving home a song came to my mind and I sang what I could remember of it but couldn’t recall all the words. Most days I’d stop to see my mother on the way home from work and I asked her if she knew how that song went. She said, “Get me started.” I sang what I could remember and then she sang it all the way through for me. I asked her how she could remember it and she replied, “Those were our songs.” “We learned them when we were young.” She would sing songs to me she’d learned in school as a child. When a little older, she would sing songs to the nurses and Hospice workers and everyone else who came to visit her. How did she do it? She said to me that she found it odd that she could remember from long ago but couldn’t remember what happened yesterday. It seems singing and long-term memory go hand-in-hand. Tonight, I was watching the British singing group “The D-Day Darlings”. One short video clip was an interview on Sky News of three of the 9 member singing group. There was Katie Ashby, Amy Rhiannon, and Jessica Hudson. They told of how they often perform at old folk’s homes and veteran’s homes. The interview was on Armistice Day, so much was said about their singing for the old veterans. Jessica Hudson told about the veterans remembering all the words of the songs, even those who seemed to have memory loss, dementia, Alsheimer’s. “Music is so important. They remember every single word.” Katie Ashby said sometimes there would be tears, not always of sadness but often of joy and happiness. (See the whole interview at: https://youtu.be/nxywrQ1ABW8?si=FP6qYhcg0-dR1_IS )
This is more proof that singing is fun and healthy.
