I’d wager that many of us have witnessed dementia steal the soul of a loved one, be it a parent, partner or sibling. For those who haven’t: It gradually erases memories and identity, changes behaviors, leaving the person a shell of who they were. Not everyone sinks into the abyss in the same manner, however. Some descend to the murky depths quite fast while others, the lucky (such as it were), linger between cognition and confusion for years. Some lash out. Others turn child-like. Either/or, it’s painful to witness; you find yourself in mourning long before the person actually dies.
On It’s Your Birthday & You’re Gorgeous, singer-songwriter Eliza Edens—whose We’ll Become the Flowers perked my ears in 2022—reflects on her mother succumbing to dementia. On the album’s Bandcamp page, she explains, “Most of these songs are a documentation of grief in real time from 2021-2024 as I was losing my mother to dementia. She passed in fall of 2024. These recordings were made just as I had finished writing the songs. They are imperfect, lo-fi, raw, and true to the emotions and realities of those moments. There were times during this period of my life when my guitar was the place I felt safest as I was trying to come to grips with what it means to lose the person who raised me in slow motion.”
In 2023, Edens uploaded a powerful performance of the title tune to YouTube for NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest; it’s buttressed by vocal support from Katie Martucci and Evangeline Young. In its original incarnation, recorded to her iPhone, it’s a little ragged yet just as moving—more so, actually. “Halfway” captures the essence of loving someone whose self is fading away, while the dramatic “Dreams to Remember” digs into how dementia steals not just from the person but from their loved ones.
The album is obviously sad yet, at the same time, it’s a stirring collection—and, for those of us who’ve watched a loved one fade away, well worth the listen. It’s catharsis set to song.
The Old Grey Cat 