For this 95-year-old musician with dementia, playing the piano keeps her feeling like herself | CBC Radio

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It’s 11:20 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and 95-year-old Marjorie Taft repeats the same few words again and again.

“I just want to rest. I just want to stay in bed.”

Her daughter, Beverly, listens but wants desperately to get her mother up and to the piano. At 1 p.m., Marjorie is scheduled to play for Recollectiv, a Toronto-based music and singalong group created for musicians with memory issues. 

Marjorie is the group’s pianist. It’s a role she relishes. But she also forgets — forgets that she’s been in bed for 14 hours, forgets that she wants to play, forgets the joy it brings her.

Because Marjorie has dementia, she lives in the moment. And in the moment, she wants to continue doing the thing she’s doing. When she plays Scrabble, she wants to continue playing. When she’s lying in bed, she wants to stay there.

But Beverly Taft knows that staying in bed would spell the beginning of the end for her mother. So on Saturday mornings, she does everything she can to coax Marjorie — a longtime musician and music teacher — to the piano.

This mother and daughter are experiencing first-hand what dementia specialists and caregivers have known for years — that even when other aspects of memory slip away, music can not only remain, but serve as a lifeline. 

Debra Sheets, a professor of nursing and gerontology researcher at the University of Victoria, says music is “like a super stimulus” for the parts of the brain that, in many cases, aren’t affected by dementia.

“It’s almost like muscle memory. If you used to play piano when you were 10 years old, that ability persists, even as you start having problems with executive functions, decision-making, things of that sort.”

Recollectiv is the brainchild of Ilana Waldston, a Toronto jazz singer whose own mother had dementia. As the disease progressed, Waldston says her mother’s filters vanished. At the symphony, she sang aloud, competing with the instrumental soloists. “So much for our symphony subscription,” recalled Waldston.

One by one, she said, the activities mother and daughter could do together in public vanished.

“At an intimate vocal concert — 200-seat theatre — she said, in full voice, ‘How much longer is this?’ — right in the middle of a song.”

So in 2017, Recollectiv was born. The group used to meet in-person at the Tranzac Club in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood. In March 2020, when the pandemic began, it went virtual, which has been a boon in some ways, making the program accessible from the comfort of home.

Marjorie and Beverly Taft have been taking part since the beginning. Beverly, 55, is also a jazz singer, as well as a college instructor, and has known Waldston for years.

‘The caregiving kind of snuck up on me’

 At 95, everything takes time, and there’s still much to be done: getting Marjorie dressed and washed, putting on her socks, washroom visits, getting downstairs and finally, breakfast. Beverly races to prepare poached eggs and juice. Without the food, Marjorie won’t have the strength to play.

Beverly, who lives with her mother part time, lays out her mother’s favourite red velour tracksuit. She turns on lively music, Celia Cruz. And she puts other Recollectiv volunteers on alert: they’re ready to call Marjorie by phone to encourage her to join. 

“The caregiving kind of snuck up on me,” Beverly explained. 

As her parents aged, it became increasingly apparent that she would be the primary caregiver. 

“My dad would say, ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done for us, and for everything you’re going to do.'”

Bill Taft died at home at the age of 100 in April 2022, with both Marjorie and Beverly at his side.

Beverly schedules a host of activities to pepper her mother’s week and to exercise her brain. 

There’s Scrabble with Mark Connery every Tuesday and Thursday, and music with Roland Hunter on Wednesdays — both friends of Beverly who help out. Then more music and word games with Beverly in between: Scrabble, Boggle, Wordle. 

That kind of cognitive variety really helps exercise the brain, said Sheets.

“We know that it’s really important, if you want to maintain your function, not to keep doing the same things, like crossword puzzles or Sudoku or puzzles. But to try new things. Because that’s what really helps your brain to maintain its plasticity.”

Alongside her research, Sheets runs arts and activity programs for people living with dementia and their caregivers, including a choir.

“We found that choir members with memory loss had about half the rate of annual decline that would have been expected from people who weren’t participating in a choir,” she said. “And it’s not that we’re changing the course of the disease. It’s that we’re helping people to stay connected to others.”

A musical life

Marjorie Taft was born into a musical family. “My mother sang and her sister played the piano, and she would hold me on her lap and put my hands on hers while she was playing. I always had music around me,” she said. 

She played in her high school band and continued to take music courses in university. In the 1970s, she attended Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, where she received her diplomas in piano performance and teaching. At parties, Marjorie was the entertainer, tickling the ivories. Later in life, she formed Marjorie’s Chorus, a group that played in retirement homes.

“Any time that there was a chance to do music, I took it,” she said.

A decade after her dementia was diagnosed, Marjorie retains her encyclopedic memory of songs, said Beverly. 

And though she can read music, Marjorie plays by ear. 

“When someone mentions a song, the tune pops up in my ear and I hear it. And it’s easy to play. If I can’t remember the total melody in something, I can get the person to sing it and then it will come back to me,” she said.

The pair hasn’t missed a Recollectiv session yet because Marjorie was in bed. But on this particular Saturday, Marjorie doesn’t want to budge. She insists, as she has so many times before, that she’s not going to the singalong.

“They’re counting on us — you — to be at the piano,” Beverly insists.

Today, they make it once again.

Marjorie’s ancient fingers, bent and beautiful, kiss the keys. Beverly, right beside her, sings along to You Are My Sunshine, Keep on Smiling and My Little Margie.

“It’s kind of like being at a party, and it’s something that she and I are doing together. For that one hour, we are side-by-side committed to this thing. That’s kind of what I learned from Recollectiv — that one hour of joy was worth all the other things.”

Beverly says she’s amazed she got her mother to the piano today. “And this happens every time — I think, ‘Today’s going to be the day where she just says: No, no, no.’ And I feel like, should I just let her rest? Am I torturing her?”

But asked what it’s like to be cajoled to the piano on Saturdays, Marjorie is emphatic.

“I’m happy to be coaxed out of bed to play music,” she says, “because that revives me.” 

“If I don’t feel like getting out of bed, music is the way to get me to move. It just makes me feel like doing something and playing something and making someone happy. I never feel like finishing.”

Marjorie says she hopes she can continue for as long as possible.

“Playing the piano is a way of expressing myself and communicating with people. If I didn’t have access to my piano, I think I’d be lost, sad. The piano is part of me, always has and always will be.” 

Beverly says she knows there will come a time when Marjorie won’t get up to play.

“I don’t know how soon it will happen. But it’s the beginning of the end, which could be a long, long end. And I feel like if the music goes away, then a really important part of her goes away. She’s just always been the pianist. Always. So as long as I can, I just want to keep it going.”