The Song About Upham

Some people just have music in them, it runs through their life like a thread. That was the case for one of our patients
– I’ll call her Linda.

Linda was a lifelong learner. One day she told me, totally off hand, that she’d taught herself how to play the mandolin. At around 60 years old. Like it was nothing. And then she casually mentioned that she and her friends used to perform at kitchen parties and nursing homes. She never called herself a musician, but she clearly was.

One day she mentioned that she’d even written a song about a place that meant a lot to her: Upham. She told me it was somewhere in this big box of music she had at home, but she didn’t have the energy to go through it all. I offered to look through it if someone in her family could bring it in. She loved that idea.

A few days later… this arrived. Let me tell you – I had no idea what I was signing up for!
It was packed. Every sheet of music she’d collected over the years. Songs from the Carter Family, Boxcar Willie, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline… it was like digging through someone’s entire musical life. And then – there it was. Her handwritten song about Upham.

With Linda’s permission, I shared it with our music therapist, Julian. He learned the melody, recorded it for her, and played it live at her bedside. We printed the sheet music and the lyrics and framed them for Linda, so she could keep it close, and so her family could hold on to it, too.

What I love about this story is that Linda didn’t see herself as anything special. But she was, in the quiet, beautiful way that people often are. We meet people in their final chapter, but that doesn’t mean their story’s over. Sometimes, it
just needs a little help to be heard.