When I was a little girl, my mother would sit down at the piano in our living room and play the theme song from the Muppets. My sister and I did not need any convincing. We would grab hands and spin in circles until the room blurred, laughing so hard it hurt, until our legs gave out and we collapsed onto the carpet in a heap of giggles and exhaustion. My mother kept playing the whole time, watching us over her shoulder, smiling at two little girls who had absolutely more energy than rhythm without a care in the world.

I did not know it then, but that living room floor was where I learned something that would shape the rest of my life. Music was not background noise in our house. It was how we celebrated, how we grieved, how we filled the silence after a hard day, and how my mother, without ever saying so directly, taught us that joy is something you can create with your own two hands. Growing up, there was almost always a song attached to a memory. I could not have told you back then that one day those same songs, or new ones like them, would become one of the most important tools I have for caring for her now.

My mother is in her late eighties now. Her mind is still sharp. She remembers a lot of the music pieces she use to play. But her body has slowed in ways that frustrate her more than she will ever admit out loud. The woman who used to move effortlessly through a kitchen or a garden now needs more time, more help, and more patience than she is used to needing. Some days that gap between what her mind wants to do and what her body can actually do brings on a quiet kind of anxiety, the sort that creeps in sideways rather than announcing itself.

This is where the music comes back in. A few times a month, I take my mother for a drive, no destination in particular, just the two of us and the radio. Coldplay comes on at times and she loves the song ‘Viva la Vida’ and I watch her fingers start tapping against her leg, following the rhythm the same way they used to move across piano keys decades ago. She is not performing for anyone. She is not even fully aware she is doing it. It is simply her body remembering something it still knows how to do, even on the days when so much else feels harder than it used to. I noticed she does this to calm her anxiety.

I used to think of those drives as a nice way to pass an afternoon. Now I understand them as something closer to medicine. AARP’s own research on music and brain health found that listening to music, even something as simple as background music in the car, has a measurable positive effect on mood, mental wellbeing, and anxiety in older adults. That tracks with what I see in the car with my mother every time. Her shoulders drop. Her breathing slows. Whatever worry she carried into the car with her seems to loosen its grip, at least for the length of a song.

There is something almost unfair about how selective aging can be with what it takes from a person and what it leaves behind. My mother cannot always trust her balance anymore, but she has never once forgotten the melody to a song she loved at twenty. Music seems to live in a part of us that holds on tighter than almost anything else, and for families caring for a parent whose body or mind is changing, that staying power can become a real source of comfort. It gives you a way in, a place to meet them, even on days when other kinds of connection feel harder to find.

What I love most about music is that it does not stay contained to just my mother and me. When our whole family gets together, someone inevitably starts playing music from a different decade, and for a few minutes the years between us seem to fold in on themselves. My mother will hum along to a song from her twenties while my nephew, who is a musician now, plays the piano or saxophone and sings while we all sing along in admiration and content. Nobody plans these moments. They simply happen, because music does not really need an introduction. It does not care how old you are or what generation you belong to. It just asks you to listen, or tap your foot, or hum along, and that is something a nine-year old and an eighty-eight year old can do together without either one having to explain themselves.

There are entire programs built around this idea now. Organizations like Music Mends Minds bring musicians and music therapists together with seniors, their caregivers, and their families for shared musical experiences, built on the understanding that for someone living with memory loss or cognitive change, music can be one of the last and clearest bridges back to who they were and who they loved. You do not need a formal program to bring some of that into your own home, though. You simply need a song your parent already loves and a little bit of time.

What Music Can Do For You Now

If music has not historically been a big part of your family’s story, it is not too late to start now, and you do not need any musical talent of your own to make it meaningful. Ask your parent what songs mattered to them when they were eighteen or twenty, the ones that were playing during their first job, their wedding, or a summer that stayed with them their whole life and build a simple playlist around the answers. Play it during the parts of the day that tend to feel hardest, a difficult transition, a long car ride, the quiet hour before dinner when restlessness often creeps in. A small speaker kept in the kitchen or in the car works just as well as anything more complicated. Sing along even if you are off key. Let them correct you if the lyrics are wrong, because being the one who remembers something clearly is its own quiet gift for a parent who spends so much of their day being helped rather than helping.

The best times of day to reach for music

Mornings tend to be one of the easiest places to start. Waking up can feel disorienting for an aging parent, especially if memory or sleep has grown less reliable, and a familiar song playing softly during breakfast or while getting dressed gives the day a predictable, gentle opening. My mother has a short list of songs from her twenties that she has always loved, and on the mornings when I play one of them while she eats, I notice her settle into the day faster, almost as if the song tells her nervous system that everything is fine before she has fully woken up.

Personal care routines are often the hardest part of the day for both an aging parent and the person helping them, and music can do real work there too. Bathing, dressing, and grooming ask an older adult to be vulnerable in ways that can feel uncomfortable, and something familiar playing quietly in the background tends to ease resistance and lower the tension in the room. The late afternoon and early evening hours are worth watching as well. Many families notice their aging parent growing more restless, anxious, or confused as the light starts to change, a pattern common enough in dementia care that it has its own name, sundowning. Reaching for a calm, familiar song right as that window begins, rather than waiting until agitation has already taken hold, tends to work far better than trying to calm things down after the fact.

Meals and bedtime are two more natural openings. Soft music during dinner can slow the pace of the meal and keep an aging parent engaged at the table rather than rushing or losing interest halfway through. At night, a short playlist of two or three calming songs as part of a wind down routine can help settle a mind that might otherwise keep circling the same worries after the lights go off. None of this needs to be complicated. The goal is simply to notice the moments in your parent’s day that already tend to feel hard, and let music arrive a little before the hard part does, rather than after.

I think about that living room floor often now, the one my sister and I collapsed onto so many times as children, breathless and laughing while our mother kept playing. I did not understand then that she was giving us something we would need for the rest of our lives, a way to feel close to each other and to her, one that would still work decades later even after so much else had changed. These days, when I watch her fingers tap along to a song in the passenger seat, I feel that same closeness again, just from the other side of it now. Wherever you are with your own aging parent, whether music has always been part of your family or has never really come up, there is likely a song somewhere that could open a door for the two of you. You may only need to press play and see what happens.

by Ceci L. x

If you haven’t read why I started this blog, my first blog post is here.