Here and Now Song
Today is my day
And right now my finest hour.
I feel the comfort of a loving touch,
Smell the sweetness of the flower.
Everything I need is given,
All my cares are swept away.
Turn my thoughts toward merry laughter,
Step by step I make my way.
Love surrounds me and protects me.
Music lifts my heart with song.
I leave yesterday behind me
Release anger, hurt and wrong.
What is over doesn’t matter.
What’s before me fills my view.
See, hear, touch, taste now for pleasure
In a world that is all new.
What I was fades from my mem’ry,
Where I am brings me delight.
Let the past be like a river
Flowing gently from my sight.
Chorus:
I am grateful for the sunlight and
I revel in the rain.
What’s before me cheers my soul.
What’s before me cheers my soul.
Liza, the tears started jumping out of my eyes as I read this song. Had I read it before? The vision of Wally, sunk a little low in the front seat of D’s truck, eyes looking left and right, hit me, and then, a moment later, she begins to sing. Softly, tenuously, growing in certainty. Did we have to begin singing first? Did we merely mention a title? Did D. hum? Wally lifted the tune and marched with it, though without moving, perched between us as she was. Carefully, without meeting our eyes, she stepped into one song and then another, clear and sweet, always right on the note.
Grover is showing the first signs of Oldtimer’s, trying to change the channel with the phone, startling me with a sudden angry injunction not to eat all of his cookies. Perhaps that is whence the tears started. Wally may be the only person I recall meeting –I never knew her– with the disease so clearly marked. I need to read much more about it, to be ready to continue our sweet life with, not just less support from Grover, but less predictable and more widely varied responses. Mood swings, unreal opinions –I admit that I have sensed this coming– but I believed that I could always “get to the bottom of” his wacky stubbornness.
It may be a while before I really feel the springs in that song. I’ll go and write now, and I thank you. (Still crying a little).
Thanks to you, Sadie, for sharing your personal experiences about Wally and Grover. In our American context, one which emphasizes a positive outlook and an it-can’t-happen-to-me attitude, it’s difficult to put safeguards in place that prepare us for sad events such as dementia. As my 81st birthday approaches I think I’d better internalize this song for myself. However, as yet I can’t even read it aloud without crying.
I wrote this poem for my friend, Wally Cass, as I watched her cope with the frustration of memory loss. Wally knew the lyrics to hundreds, maybe thousands of songs. She could sing them long after she could no longer recognize even her family members. My thought is that one might learn these lyrics early in one’s life and use them for self comfort even after most other memories have faded.