A song about a person with broken branches (dementia)
Updated: Oct 3
I know what you may be thinking: dementia sounds like a pretty heavy subject for a song. But hear me out.
This song grew out of people I have listened to, cared for, and come to admire. Their stories stayed with me, and eventually, I wanted to put some of what they taught me into music.
Many years ago, I became a Texas-certified Long-Term Care Ombudsman. As a volunteer, I regularly visit local nursing homes and advocate for residents. Much of what I do, though, begins with something simple: I listen.
Spend enough time in nursing homes, and dementia becomes an unmistakable presence. I have sometimes thought of it as the “elephant in the room”—something that touches so many lives, yet can be difficult to talk about.
Sometimes its effects are advanced and painfully obvious. Other times, they are subtle. Recently, I spent half an hour talking with a resident before I began to notice signs of memory loss and confusion. Moments like that remind me how much we can miss when we don’t take time to listen.
My experience with my brother Rick brought that lesson much closer to home.
When Rick was dying from cancer and entered hospice care, I moved into his home to be with him. He wanted to spend his final months there, and I did everything I could to honor that wish.
As his illness progressed, he experienced periods of confusion and hallucinations. He saw things I could not see. He picked up his phone and spoke to people who were not there. Sometimes he carried on conversations with someone only he seemed to know was in the room. There were times when Rick was lucid and very much himself. Hours later, he might be in a world I could not enter. I could stay beside him, but I could not always follow him.
A couple of years ago, I met another remarkable man whose story changed the way I think about dementia—and, in some ways, changed my life. He is an attorney living with Lewy body dementia. Although he speaks publicly about his diagnosis, I will leave his name out of this post. He shares his experiences with medical students and caregivers, helping them understand the disease from the perspective of the person living with it. By his own account, he is now in its later stages.
Hearing him describe his journey moved me in ways I still find difficult to explain. He gave a personal voice to something I had often observed from the outside.
That is where Broken Branches began.
I collaborated with AI to develop the lyrics, and AI generated the vocals and music. It did much of the heavy lifting, but the backstory for the song came from these encounters: the conversations in nursing homes, the time beside my brother, and the courage of a man willing to tell others what dementia feels like from within.
My hope is that Broken Branches helps us look beyond the disease and see the person living with it. Someone with a lifetime of experiences, relationships, and love. Someone who still deserves to be heard, even when finding the words becomes difficult.
Yes, it is a heavy subject for a song. But it is also a deeply human one—and one I believe deserves our attention, our compassion, and our willingness to listen.
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