57 Summers Later

"I’ve had dementia for nine years,” a very alert gentleman, Pat, was informing me.

Click here to hear all 7+ minutes of "Hey Jude" Enjoy!

“Wow,” was all I could say.

“Yes, I was in another memory care facility before

this one.”

Is he making this stuff up? What’s he doing here? He’s so ‘with it.’

Quickly, Pat changed the subject. “You know what my all-time favorite song is?”

“No,” my sister and I responded.

“It’s a Beatle’s song.”

Sue guessed: “She Loves You.”

“No,” he said with a playful expression. Meanwhile, our older sister tilted her head up. She has been declining quite rapidly with Frontal Temporal dementia and we were there on a visit.

“You have beautiful brown eyes,” he told her.

She smiled. What woman doesn’t want a compliment? Even when our minds have checked out and our bodies no longer do as told, the ego must be the last remaining visage of who we are.

“It’s ‘Hey Jude!’” Pat called out loudly.

Well, I don’t think I have to tell you that Sue and I began singing. Pat, too, with gusto. My sister mouthed the words. But I heard other voices and turned. It was such a heart-warming sight to see the other residents in the dining room singing with smiles on their faces.

This was the song of our youth – before worldly cares and concerns began filling our brain matter. Tucked deep inside the folds of memory – “na, na, na, na-na na na, Hey Jude.”

That ‘na na’ part is called a ‘coda.’ It extended the song to a seven-minute single! Did you know that it was one of the most successful Beatles song? Recorded in 1968 as a single (“Revolution on side B) and then appeared on the ‘The White’ album – just as things were beginning to fall apart for the super successful British foursome?

Somehow in this setting it was so appropriate.

As I researched the words, because, hey, don’t we all make up our own versions? I found out that Paul McCartney wrote it for John Lennon’s son, Jules, then just 5 years old. It began as a way to comfort the son of John and Cynthia Lennon – a steady couple in the formation of the band – as John was leaving his wife for Yoko Ono. Paul said in an interview that he changed the name from Jules to Jude: “take a sad song and make it better.”

Though John Lennon, and many other people for that matter, have claimed the song was written about them: “go out and get her.” The adult parts of the song are undeniable.

And as we sat in a memory care facility 57 summers later, this song called across the decades. We may think of it as just a feel good song, but it’s debut was in the height of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. It coincided with the violent subjugation of Vietnam War protestors at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and condemnation in the West of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia with its crushing attempts to introduce democratic reforms there. The juxtaposition of child/adult, bad/sad, heavy & light make this an anthem for leaving behind one world for another.

How do we make it better? The unrest of our times today, our country and even our families may feel beyond our ability to change, but this song reminds us again not to “carry the world upon our shoulders.” Find something or someone to let in your heart. Bring a friend a flower. Look up into the night sky and see the wonder around us. Give a stranger a compliment. Find a way to celebrate the summer before it's over and “let it under your skin, then you’ll begin to make it better. Better. Better! Better!!