| “Music-Prompted Reminiscence” with Katie Jones, Music Therapist with Hudson Valley Hospice
| Bella Bromberg
| On a sticky, mosquito-plagued June afternoon, Katie Jones, a music therapist for Hudson Valley Hospice, drove down a winding gravel road, past a small graveyard, to visit her patient Jeanette. Jones sings for Jeanette at least weekly (“sometimes twice, because she loves it so much”). When they began working together nine months earlier, Jeanette sat at the living room piano and clanged on the keys as Jones sat beside her, strumming a guitar. But “for a while now, she’s been lying down,” Jones said, walking into her client’s farmhouse in Saugerties, NY.
Jeanette, who is 95, raised five children here with her late husband, Joe, whose photo – yellow shirt, straw hat, thoughtful gaze – hangs next to Jeanette’s bed. “He just begged me for the fifth one,” Jeanette said with a jocular moan when Jones asked about her children.
A thin, artificially blonde woman in a blue floral top, Jeanette lay in a foldout bed set up in the living room. Every so often, she asked her grandson to adjust her pillows.
“And you have 20 grandchildren, right?” Jones prompted.
“I don’t know,” Jeanette said, laughing. “I wish somebody would tell me!”
Jeanette, who has dementia but retains a general awareness of her condition, seemed fond of self-deprecating humor. She lives with a rotating cast of family, with a grandson taking today’s daytime shift.
Jones began with “You Are My Sunshine,” a song Jeanette recognized right away, embellishing Jones’ gentle, steady tone with high-pitched squeals and rolling tongue trills. Midway through the song, she introduced a clucking noise that made Jones laugh.
“Beautiful,” Jones said, ending the song.
“Heh?” Jeanette asked, suddenly confused. “You’re beautiful,” she said.
“You’re beautiful,” Jones replied.
After “Home on the Range,” Jones joked that they should change the lyric to “Home on the Farm,” given Jeanette’s living situation. “What animals do you have here?” Jones asked.
“Reindeer,” Jeanette said promptly.
Her grandson, listening on a nearby couch, shook his head. “No, no reindeer. Mostly chickens. And cows.”
“We used to have lots of cows,” Jeanette added, then proceeded to recite the story of when she walked in on her father-in-law urinating in the barn after she returned from her honeymoon. When Jones asked where Jeanette spent her honeymoon, she didn’t remember, but a few moments later, she blurted out “Niagara Falls!”
After “This Land is Your Land,” Jeanette closed her eyes for a while. “You are so wonderful,” she told Jones finally.
“You too,” Jones said. “Does it feel good to sing?”
“Oh, yes.” Jeanette played viola in her college orchestra and sang in the choir. “I was a contralto,” she said proudly when Jones asked which voice part she sang.
Jones used each song – mostly folk tunes from the 1930s and 40s – as an entry point for conversations about her client’s past: Do you remember when you learned that song? You sang this in your college choir, right? You told me about listening to this song with Joe–where did you go on your honeymoon again?
“We call it music-prompted reminiscence,” Jones explained later. Not every song generates discussion about major life events, but when Jones sees an opening, she asks questions that help Jeanette reflect on her past.
“A lot of end-of-life is looking at your life and deciding that you are ready to let go of it,” Jones said. “Reviewing your life is important, if you’re able to. Even to place value in the things you’ve done and the time you’ve spent here.” Music, she added, can “facilitate that life review.”
Katie Jones and Jeanette sing “You Are My Sunshine” in Jeanette’s living room on June 30, 2025. 🎧 The audio doesn’t work in the email, but you can listen here.
For many end-of-life patients, music also encourages the kind of conversations and expressions that matter most. Amy Clements-Cortés, a music therapist and researcher at the University of Toronto, describes this as “relationship completion” – the expression of important sentiments between people when one is nearing death.
“It’s really crucial during that time that people express key sentiments to each other, things like ‘I love you’,” Clements-Cortés said. “With music, we sometimes can communicate that in a deeper way, in an impactful way, by expressing those messages in song.”
For many, that connection continues through a meaningful song, like a wedding song, that carries rich visual and emotional memories. “Music permeates our lives,” Clements-Cortés said. “Many people can use music to connect with each other and not even realize that they’re doing that.”
* * *
“Let Me Call You Sweetheart” led Jeanette to think, with help from Jones’s questions, about Joe and their courtship. The two met at a square dance. Jeanette was immediately smitten, but their seven-year courtship frustrated her, as she was eager for commitment. “Seven years, but then one day he said, ‘Let’s get married tomorrow!’” Jones said, filling in the details of the marriage plot she’d gleaned from previous visits.
Jeanette sighed. “He was the most wonderful husband.”
To Jones, who celebrates six years working at Hudson Valley Hospice this year, these music-making sessions are as important for families as for the patients themselves, an opportunity to see their loved ones laugh and sing, which happens less frequently when someone’s in hospice. “The family and friends and caregivers see them in this other light,” Jones said. “They see the potential to still have fun, still be playful, and it changes their perception.”
In fostering reminiscence through emotionally connective music, the sessions also “create a container,” for family members to pre-emptively work through their grief in a “helpful and safe way,” Jones added.
“The music’s gonna start, the music’s gonna end, and in the middle, you’ll feel something. There’s safety in the song,” she explained. “You know it’s going to end, so you feel the safety of letting go for a moment. Music can provide that opportunity for a family to emote. To let it all out.”
Editor’s Note: Jeanette died at home in her Saugerties farmhouse on Wednesday, July 23, 2025, surrounded by her family. At the funeral, Jeanette’s family asked Jones to honor her by facilitating a sing-along. “It was quite beautiful, a packed room singing her favorite tunes,” said Jones by email.
Bella Bromberg is a freelance writer and storytelling instructor based in New York City. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Barnard College and is currently earning her master’s from Columbia Journalism School. Read her story about the Threshold Choir.
Aging in America News 
Leave a comment