Giving the gift of memory
Pair of easy craft projects ideal for helping elderly recall fond memories
For elderly people struggling with memory loss, one of the toughest things can be forgetting the details of their own lives. What must it be like when you struggle to recall something you were sure you’d never forget — the name of an old friend, perhaps, or a favourite city where you once lived, or the holiday meals you always cooked?
“This is people’s biggest fear, to lose their memory and to lose that sense of self,” says Dr. Gwynn Morris, associate professor of psychology at Meredith College.
I reached out to Dr. Morris and to another gerontology expert — Ann Norwich, director of the adult gerontology nurse practitioner program at York College of Pennsylvania — because my mother-in-law, 93, is finding it harder to remember details about her own, quite remarkable life.
Morris and Norwich offered two craft project ideas to help jog an elderly person’s memories and perhaps retain the knowledge they still have:
Custom crossword puzzles
Crossword puzzles aren’t quite the cure-all for aging brains that they’re sometimes touted as, Morris says. But keeping the mind active can help slow some aspects of cognitive decline. And practising recall of important information regularly can help you retain it.
So if an elderly person once liked crosswords, it could be useful and fun to create custom puzzles using information they want to remember. Focus on valuable information, such as the names of grandchildren and some details about them, Norwich says.
“You want to play to things that are personally relevant to them,” Norwich says, and “make sure that these are positive experiences.”
Personalized playlists and songs
Music can be especially valuable in triggering memories in older people, Norwich says, so she suggests making personalized playlists for elderly relatives.
How does this work? As we age, “semantic memory,” which includes historical facts and other non-personal information, such as the lyrics to an old song, tends to be better preserved than personal memories. But that semantic memory is useful in triggering the “episodic memory” that includes our personal stories.
So old music can trigger different personal, episodic memories in each person who listens to it.
To select songs with the most impact, consider the research into the “reminiscence bump.” Studies show that most people have particularly strong recall about events that happened in early adulthood, specifically throughout their 20s, says Morris. So pick a selection of songs that were popular when your loved one was between 20 and 30 — these songs are most likely to spark the clearest personal memories.
You can save the playlist to an iPod, or burn into a CD, which you set up in a dock or CD player with a timer or alarm clock function that will play the music at a particular time of day.
Once it’s ready, spend some time listening to the playlist together, and ask your relative what they remember about listening to these songs in the past and about the years when the songs were popular. You, and they, may be surprised what good memories surface.