Music That Kept My Nonna Alive

Illustration by Baran Forootan

I have my phone set next to my laptop, Italian music spilling softly from its speaker. As I type, I picture her delicately sitting next to me, whispering the lyrics under her breath. For a moment, I let myself believe she’s really there. And in a way, she is. Because once, this wasn’t just something I longed for. It was real. And music lets me live inside that memory again.

When I was a teenager, my Nonna was diagnosed with dementia. In its initial stages, her lapses were tiny, and almost comedic–like the time she swore her mug with the CN Tower on it came from her small town in Italy, not the Costco around the corner. But over time, her memory unraveled further, taking with it the threads of what made her her–her recipes, her stories, her family. 

I’ll never forget one visit. I walked through the door, and my cousin, sitting beside her, lit up and said, “Nonna, look who’s here!” She turned to me, studied my face, then shrugged. “I don’t know.” And yet, all around me, I was everywhere. Every school photo I had ever taken sprawled across her dining table. The sticky Rubik’s cube she never touched but kept because I loved it sat waiting in its usual spot. The card I had written her leaned against her bedside. My presence lingered in every corner of that house. But to her, I had already disappeared. Because dementia doesn’t care about what you leave behind. 

I continued to sit with Nonna amongst the stillness–the kind of silence that felt heavy, almost immovable. For a moment, I felt defeated. How could I bridge the distance between us, when even my name no longer found its way to Nonna’s lips?

And then, almost instinctively, my cousin reached for her phone. She opened the playlist we had created solely for Nonna–all her favourite Italian songs, all in one place. She pressed play, and the music echoed in the previously dull room. A glimmer appeared in Nonna’s eyes, one I thought was lost. The corners of her mouth turned upward slightly, and she seemed to gain life with each beat of the song. Her lack of voice progressed into a murmur, humming along to the melody–she remembered. She remembered! The music carried her back to a place dementia could not touch.

Shaking, she reached for my hand and squeezed it. Squeezed it the same way she would after I’d hand her one of my school photos with a big smile. The same way she would after I had solved her Rubik’s cube. The same way she would after she’d read one of my handwritten cards. In that squeeze was everything she couldn’t say anymore: love, pride, togetherness.

That moment taught me that music has the power to anchor us to who we are. It can pierce through silence, through loss, through the erosion of memory. Music can tether us back to the people we thought were slipping away, to the feelings we believed had disappeared. And although she’s gone, Nonna lives among the notes, the melody, the lyrics–her voice overlaid with the songs themselves.

For me, music gave me Nonna back–even if it was only for a song.