Robert said  "music saved my life" to me today. He revealed he had been a prisoner of war in WW11 and sang to himself everyday to get through it.  I am playing various tunes on an Irish wooden flute for him--Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Tennessee Waltz, Aura Lea, My Wild Irish Rose.....  I have been visiting him for several years.

 "You sang everyday" I asked?

"Yes everyday I sang to myself" he answered.  "I was in isolation except when someone came with food or to beat the crap out of me.  Music saved my life." 

"What songs did you sing?" I asked

"Those songs you are playing" he answered. "Stephen Foster songs."

Every time I finished a song, he said, "another Stephen Foster song."

Over the years of playing flute and singing to Robert, I had learned many things about his life prior to  his being confined to bed, existing in a stark room with two pictures of family members on the wall, a TV, and little else. This was the first time I had heard of the role of music in a dark chapter of his life.

one story he often told me was of I falling in love in ireland, but his love dying in a car wreck.