Passing on Musical Memories

In an earlier blog post  I wrote about my connection to music as a child. Today I had yet another cool realization. One of my clients really likes Elvis. 

Technically Elvis is one of his special interests. I'd say it's his main special interest.We as staff motivate him by talking about doing stuff like Elvis. This client named the group home van Elvis. A while back he got a DVD box set of about 10 DVDs on Elvis' life and footage of live concerts and recording sessions. We watched those all day today. 

An older co-worker told me that Elvis covered a lot of old songs because I recognized some of the songs from the radio when I was a kid and Mom would listen to oldies. He covered Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water and "Sweet Caroline." He was basically a cover-artist who knew how to shake it. 

Those songs brought back memories of listening to old records on Mom's old record player and later on tapes. I remember Mom actually would sing "Sweet Caroline" to me. I guess I really liked it when I first heard it. She may have even sang "Bridge over Troubled Water" to me. Those two songs may have been really soothing. 

As I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes in the kitchen today I found myself singing those songs as they had been played on the Elvis documentary. Suddenly I realized my client was singing along as much as he could. He was on the stairs trying to dance like Elvis while singing. He had a really big grin on his face. 

Suddenly I realized that God was giving me an opportunity to re live my childhood memory of singing the oldies with my mom. It was a neat feeling - I guess what some would call touching - that here I was a grown up in a caregiver role singing these same songs that I enjoyed as a child to another person for his benefit. I think it's cool how God can use stuff like music - sometimes the exact songs I enjoyed to pass on those good memories on.