
As we age, we deal with issues we didn’t even think of in the past. Day to day life becomes more challenging because it’s harder to get things done. Things are getting more complicated. How you have always done it doesn’t work anymore. You need to learn new skills, develop new patience, stop and breathe.

I’m spending more and more time each day on YouTube listening to music. I watch auditions on the competitive shows. I listen to ‘reactions to music’ to find musicians and singers new to me. I save things to my bookmarks and go back and listen to more music from new and old favorites.

Music takes me away in the same way a beloved book lets me escape. I go to a different place in my mind where I calm down, shed years, worries, and cares, and BREATHE for a few minutes.
My life is such that my husband (the bane of my existence and the love of my life) and I are together almost 24/7 these days. He had a couple of strokes and though others may not notice much, these have changed him in lots and lots of ways. He is perfectly capable of getting up on the roof and trying to fix things – and therein lies much of the problem. He will be 80 in November and has no business stomping around on the roof. He then has trouble getting down, and has spent an hour or so while I was getting my hair cut, lying on the roof, waiting for me to get home and help him get on the ladder.
Since getting my hair cut and getting a monthly massage are my only times away, I have developed some things that ‘take me away’ while not going anywhere (if that makes sense.) Listening to music is one of these.
I have always been amazed that hearing a piece of music you “shook your parts to” as a teenager takes you right back there in your mind. In your head you picture the whole scene at the party, the cute guy with whom you were dancing, the moves everyone made, the happiness that surrounded you. Music is magic.
