I'm a few months into my 16th year of providing live musical entertainment for Seniors in Southwest Ohio. I'm incredibly blessed to be able to do this...and nothing but this...for this long. I've met some amazing people, seen profound courage and grace and learned a lot about my self along the way. Working with members of our "greatest generation" is a privilege. Today began as most days do, I had a single show near downtown Dayton at 2:00pm. An Assisted Living facility, this group would be fairly high functioning but with some physical or early stage memory loss issues. A mixed group, I planned on performing a variety of material from Country, Big Band and Oldies. The show was fun, everyone got involved and left in better spirits than when they walked (or rolled) into the room. That's what I do...or rather, that's what I get to do on a daily basis, over 400 times a year. What made today different was the phone call I received from a long term client around lunch time, asking was I available for a special performance later today? I explained that I had a performance scheduled from 2:00pm to 3:00pm, but after that I was free. "What was up?" I asked... The client explained that one of her residents, let's call her Mary, (not her real name) was facing surgery tomorrow where they would amputate her remaining leg. She previously had had one leg removed about two months ago. Mary was getting quite anxious about the procedure and the Activity Director wanted to think of something that might soothe her nerves for a while. The director knew Mary had followed me around for several years in my public performances and asked if I would come in and spend some time with her. This woman is facing a surgery in a little over 12 hours to cut off her one remaining leg and they think I'm the guy to help her out? "Sure," I said, "...what room number is she?" The director didn't tell Mary I was coming in. I'm not scheduled to perform there until later in the month, so there's no way she was expecting me. "Mary, you have a surprise visitor stopping by later on..." was all they told her. I arrived at the facility around 4:30pm. I walked to her room and knocked on the door frame and said, "Hey Mary, what's up?" Mary didn't recognize me at first but as I... Click here to continue reading...
