The retirement home is the environment most often associated with old age, illness, dementia and dying. But it doesn't have to be that way. So little is needed. An afternoon lesson, a few familiar songs and children. We can build a special bridge between old age and youth by bringing children into the home of the elderly and having them play familiar tunes and melodies. These are special, magical moments. It is then that everyone present finds themselves in nostalgia and youth. Time stands still.
Music can do many things. Music truly connects and unites. It heals, it brings joy and it is universal for people of all ages.
In music schools, performances and concerts are part of the curriculum, part of the education that prepares children and young people for the stage, for performing in front of a crowd, for the trepidation, for coping with it and for the applause that gives satisfaction after a successful performance. But when we go up the hill to the home of our grandmothers, grandfathers, great-grandmothers and great-great-grandfathers, we know that this performance is different.
Every year for the past few decades, the Trbovlje Music School has been organising a performance in a slightly different setting during the festive season of December, as well as in the spring months. The performers visit the Franc Salamon Trbovlje Retirement Home. There is no the big stageand the countless chairs are not correctly arranged in rows. There is only a large dining room, with an old but still usable upright piano, kitchen chairs and tables set back to accommodate elderly people in wheelchairs.
The staff do their best to make sure that each of them has enough space to listen to the performance, which takes place in the afternoon before dinner. And the repertoire... Well, here begins the story of magic, the wonderful intergenerational bonding and the love of the songs that have been sung and played by parents and grandparents, that have been passed down from generation to generation and that bind us together as a nation. Songs that we, as genes, pass on from the past and pass on to our children, our students. Humble songs that could sink into oblivion in a media saturated with singing. But they won't be, as long as children and grandparents can still sing and play them together.
It is always the younger pupils, the children, who bring a smile to the faces of the elderly and make their eyes sparkle again, which usually lose their sparkle in the late autumn of life. We teachers have agreed among ourselves to bring in small groups, the youngest soloists, and especially accordion players to play a folk song or a song from their youth. When the youngest ones play those childhood folk songs, the older ones always have tears of nostalgia between their grey-white hair and saddened looks. They also murmur, sing along. I often see their trembling hands folded in their laps.
At the end, it's always the turn of our accordion players with the good old frajtonarica. A stretched bellows, the familiar polkas and waltzes, and their hands are already full, and they are clapping and singing along. They would dance too, but their feet don't obey. Well, a few years ago, one of the gentlemen who lived there took me to the dining room dance floor anyway. You can see the blood rush through their veins and their hearts leap. For those few minutes, they are young again and free of disease, age and ailments.
Behind the glass doors, I usually see the parents of the children, even younger grandparents who have elderly relatives in the home and who take some time that day to come for a visit that they always postpone. Last year, I also took the opportunity to visit my father-in-law, Edi, who is now living there. I am grateful to the staff who look after him and all the other people who live in the retirement home in Trbovlje. I am grateful to the students and their parents for coming. To play, to sing, to be with family members they no longer see every day. Many a child has said to me before the performance, happy and proud: "Teacher, you know that my aunt/grandmother/grandfather will come to hear me."
These are scenes that let the audience know that life is slowly flowing away in the stream of time. Many of those I still remember are no longer with us, but I know that our musical visits have brightened their last years.
Every year I lead these performances and tell stories about my childhood, about the music and the songs of their youth and mine. Many a person with dementia has a memory, so they sing, they come alive. I have also witnessed some sadder stories. One lady was taken back to her old memories by the sight of the children and was so upset emotionally that, when she was in tears and screaming, she had to be taken out of the room.
But they are beautiful moments nonetheless. It's when I realise how little it takes to make time stand still for a moment. How little it takes to bring back memories of people in the last years of their lives, of their youth, of their children, of a time when they were healthy, strong and creative. To make them feel joy, happiness and contentment for a moment. There is no room for pain, sadness and awareness of transience. This is the little miracle that music and the presence of children and relatives make possible.
Katja Mikula, 16. 3. 2025
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