YouTube has been a great mood lifter here for weeks.  On most nights we choose an artist or a Show and sing along for an hour or two.

Last night M mentioned how much her father liked Moonlight Serenade.  We started with the tablet on the dining room table as we ate a late tea, at almost 10 pm.  Then we moved to the lounge where our Smart T V brought us pictures and music from a bygone era for a couple of hours.

We played ‘In the Mood’ several times and that seemed to be prophetic.  Maureen was having the time of her life singing word for word those numbers her dad loved so much.  We even had the occasional slow foxtrot to add to the evening’s entertainment.  Do you know she almost let me lead rather than follow.

Music is a great mood lifter for M but there is more to it than that.  It gave her an opportunity to remember her dad with great fondness.  The stories about him flowed as we selected from his favourite numbers.  It also helped her to see that she is not ‘going mad’ as she often fears and that aspects of her memory are more than intact: her long term memory is excellent.  Ask her to recite the register of her class in High School and you will be amazed.  She can go down the register in alphabetical order with first name and surname.  In fact I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she could recall where her classmates sat and the status of their parents.

I am not sure who will be our focal point tonight.  Perhaps my ability to search on YouTube will not be tested.  What I am sure of is that it is possible to lift mood by all sorts of methods: you just got to get it right on the night.