cleve callison’s blog

I’m no expert on this topic, but I fond this post from a member of the Fasola Discussions list to be very moving. (Fasola refers to the syllables Fa, Sol, La, three of the four syllables used by Sacred Harp singers — find out more at Fasola.org). The question that arose was whether lifelong singing keeps the mind alert.

I did a sort of vigil with my mom the night she died (from cumulative side effects of advanced Alzheimer’s).  She was a lifelong member of the Disciples of Christ, and a minister’s wife, and of course had known all their hymns.  And so had I, being their kid.  So I got out my bayan (a Russian chromatic button accordion, which she wouldn’t have known from Adam’s off ox, even when she had her mental faculties) and played through the old hymn book I found in the dresser of her nursing home room.  It was mostly later 19th century hymns, some gospel songs — The old rugged cross, Sweet hour of prayer, Let the lower lights be burning — that genre, anyway.  And I did a few more “oldies” that weren’t in the hymn book — like Whispering hope, In the garden, and Help somebody today — since I knew she used to like them.

The bayan sounds pretty much like the reed organs of her youth; and she was moving her mouth with at least some of the words of nearly every song I played.  She probably hadn’t recognized any visitor for six months before that, and could no longer move her major limbs. And she was in the final phase of a Do Not Resuscitate order (advance medical directive) that she had requested and signed, years before. But at some deep level, she still clearly knew one old hymn from another. I played hymns off and on from about 9:30 PM to 12:30 AM, before I called it a night. And the nurses woke me up at 5 AM to tell me she had stopped breathing.

If anybody’s into the Daniel Gawthrop number, “Sing me to Heaven,” it was that sort of experience.