The summer after my 8th grade I was enrolled in a camp where I had to do service in different parts of the community. One of my service opportunities was working at Live Oaks Senior Day Care, which was a place that the elderly of the community could come during the day to play cards, listen to music, and interact with others. This experience was my very first encounter working with the elderly in our community, and although I only volunteered at Live Oaks for one day, I really enjoyed it.
I was so inspired by my experiences at Live Oaks Senior Day Care that I decided to find volunteer opportunities at other senior centers (I would have volunteered at Live Oaks; however, since the facility is a day center, it did not fit my schedule due to school). I created a list of about 5-7 senior care facilities and emailed each one to see if they had volunteer opportunities. Unfortunately, I did not receive any responses from any senior facilities. So, I decided to call the senior care facilities and visit them in person to find volunteer opportunities. This time, I was able to achieve success at Lincoln Glen Nursing Center. I had a brief interview with Lincoln Glen Nursing Center’s activities director, which went very well, and ultimately, I had a volunteer position at Lincoln Glen.
I started volunteering at Lincoln Glen immediately. At first, I was just in charge of preparing activities for the residents at Lincoln Glen or helping the residents with arts and crafts. However, as time went by, the activities director allowed me to have more personal conversations with the residents. I greatly enjoyed talking to the residents because it helped me realize how much the elderly have to offer and that they are an integral part of the community.
As part of talking with the residents, my activities director introduced me to the Music & Memory program. Now, what is a Music & Memory program, you may ask? Well, the Music & Memory program aims to help senior citizens suffering from memory loss diseases remember their past memories by listening to playlists that are specifically curated to the residents’ interests. From the first time my activities director mentioned this program to me, I was extremely interested. My activities director told me that I would be perfect to lead the program, and so, I started working on it right away.
Before I started working on the Music & Memory program at Lincoln Glen, I expected that my job would entail talking to some residents, creating some playlists, and seeing the immediate changes. However, this was most definitely not the case. When I actually started working on the program, I learned that the Music & Memory program was entirely dormant and extremely poorly maintained. The cabinet that had all the headphones, iPods, cases, and chargers in it was completely unorganized. There were piles of iPods that had no headphones attached to them. There were headphones that were plugged into the wrong iPods. iPods were labeled with the names of residents that did not even live at Lincoln Glen anymore.
So, before I could even start talking to residents, creating playlists, or seeing the changes in residents, I had to organize the program and get it running again. First, I created a list of all the current residents at Lincoln Glen that were part of the program and residents that could be potentially interested in the program. Then, I organized the iPods; I cleaned out the iPods that belonged to residents no longer at Lincoln Glen and assigned them to other residents that were going to participate in the Music & Memory program. I did the same for the headphones and the cases. Finally, I organized the cabinet. I installed hooks into the cabinet to hang the headphones and the iPod cases, brought in more iPod chargers, and arranged everything in the cabinet by the resident they belonged to. Then, at each nursing station in the facility, I assembled a Music & Memory binder, which included the residents at the station that were part of the program and their daily Music & Memory log sheets. Finally, I felt like I could get started talking to residents and making playlists, since the basics were finally taken care of.
First, I found the Music & Memory interview forms, which were essentially questionnaires I would fill out while talking to residents in order to gauge their music interests and the type of playlists I could curate for them. The questions on the form included things, such as if they had any experience playing instruments themselves (so that I could add instrumental piano music if they played piano, for example) or if they had any favorite singers that they could recall. Based on the residents’ responses, I then started to assemble playlists that I thought they would like. For one resident who told me he used to play the trumpet, I created a playlist filled with songs that had trumpet solos. After creating a playlist of about twenty to forty songs for the resident, I would find the resident’s iPod from the newly organized, easily navigable cabinet and download their playlist onto the iPod. The final step was to play the songs for the resident. I helped the residents put on their headphones, connected their headphones to their iPod, and played their music. I changed the volume as per their desire and sat back to watch the results.
When I first started working with residents as part of the Music & Memory program, I thought that the personalized music playlists would magically restore their memories. However, I quickly learned that that was a very unrealistic expectation of what the results would look like. As I continued working on the program, I realized that the results were much more subtle and nuanced. A resident closing their eyes to listen to the music was a result. A resident humming along with the songs was a result. A resident tapping their hand or foot was a result. I came to understand that the music I had chosen for the residents was a way for the residents to take a trip down memory lane. For example, one resident I interviewed for the program mentioned to me that she remembered the song that played during her and her husband’s first dance at their wedding. So, I added that song to her playlist, and I remember when she listened to that song as part of the Music & Memory program, she closed her eyes and swayed her head from side to side, reminiscing about the wonderful memory that the song reminded her of.
Regardless of how minute or subtle the results from the Music & Memory program were, they were present. Seeing the instant gratification on the residents’ faces as I worked with them week after week, revising, editing, adding to, and deleting songs from their playlists, made me confident, that the work I was doing was meaningful and that I was positively contributing to the quality of life that these seniors had at Lincoln Glen Nursing Center.
