How beautiful are the memories we have (well, not all of them, ehhh, some are better off forgotten). But, in general, we tend to remember the good moments from each situation in our lives, and some stand out more than others. Some you remember as if they happened yesterday, while others fade into oblivion. People with dementia or Alzheimer’s tend to forget everything, both the good and the bad. The first things they forget are the most recent, but they retain a vivid memory of when they were young or children. Many of those memories are still very much alive in the minds of these patients, and when you talk to them, they might repeat the same story from the past a dozen times a day. Today, we’ll remember…

With these caregiver chronicles, I want to explain that we need to respect older people, be patient with them, and listen to their stories over and over again, always with the expression as if it were the first time we’re hearing it. Today, I want to share some of those repetitive stories that my children and I hear every day from my mother. And yes, we always ask the same curious questions as if it were the first time she’s told us.

There are several stories that my mother repeats daily. One of them is the story she tells about when she used to go to parties and all the boys wanted to dance with her, but she was very shy and embarrassed because of her hands, so she wouldn’t dance with any of them (well, only with the cutest ones, hahaha). Another one of her favorite stories is when she used to spend summers in Calpe with her family, riding bicycles around the town, and one of her cousins didn’t ride well and would always lag behind. And our favorite story, the one my mother can repeat about 1000 times a day, is about the Masa Coral. Yeah, yeah, what the heck is that, Nuria? You always ask me the same thing…

The Masa Coral was apparently (or still is, I think it’s still active) a group of people who sang and held choir concerts in Madrid. It seems my mother, besides painting, was also good at singing (just like her granddaughter, my daughter, who paints and sings very well—seems like the talent skips a generation, because if you hear me sing or see me paint, you’ll want to leave). She says that once, Spanish television filmed one of their concerts and put her in the front row… So she spends her days telling us how she sang in the Masa Coral of Madrid and appeared on TV. She had told us this story thousands of times, and honestly, we didn’t really believe her, haha, until a couple of months ago when I was gathering all her things from her apartment in Madrid, I found a couple of photos where, indeed, she’s seen singing in a choir in front of a Spanish TV camera (one of these photos is the cover image of this chronicle).

So, that’s it, guys and girls. Memories are memories, let the elderly tell you their best memories over and over again and experience them with them.