What's Under the Tree for Grandma

Since Grandma's joy's are limited to dinnertime and music, I'm a bit limited on what I can get her for Christmas. She goes through clothes pretty fast, so I'm going to get her a wide-necked top and a pair of elastic sweatpants that will a) be comfortable, and b) provide enough room for her to twist around it without her getting tangled up in her clothes. She likes to take her top off (or try to take her top off) for unknown reasons and she has some bad neck wounds because she would get caught up and the shirt would cut into her fragile skin. A couple of other Alzheimer's inmates like to take their tops off too, so I'm thinking this is just one of those symptomatic traits that we'll have to work around. I could care less if she took her top off, but I just don't want her to hurt herself.

My other gift is a music box that plays "White Christmas" in addition to other classic tunes like Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer, Jingle Bells, etc. Christmas tunes are about all that Grandma remembers anymore, and I hope that she will be singing along this Wednesday night when Hillcrest has their Christmas Event. One of the Quad Cities most popular singers, Jack Carey, is leading the program, and last year we couldn't keep a lid on her bellowing (nor would we want to).

She was a good singer back in the day, and on the farm would play the organ for us and we would sing along to songs. Sometimes she would let us play on the organ ourselves, and we would be pressing all of the goofy buttons like fox trot and samba trying to throw her off beat. Never happened.