Watch the couple who uses the Music Memory Box to interact
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An 82-year-old husband with dementia has lost the ability to speak to his 74-year-old wife after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia in 2011.
Steve Garrity, who lost his ability to speak, can now interact with his wife Monica with the help of a ‘Music Memory Box’.
The ‘Music Memory Box’ is a kit which you can fill with memorable objects like photographs and music for the ones who are suffering from dementia.
You can then move the objects into the centre of the space and interact with each other.
Steve and Monica, from Bristol, are now able to interact with each other, thanks to the ‘Music Memory Box’. They interact using the box while their favourite song “Temma harbour” by Mary Hopkin plays.
Monica said: “We have been able to connect again, it is wonderful. We moved to Ghana the day after our wedding more than 50 years ago so the song is very emotive.”
“He doesn’t usually communicate with me but when the music plays, he hums along and even holds out his hand to grab mine. It takes us back to when we got married, it feels like we are back in Ghana together.”
Monica was one of the first users in the UK to use the box in 2017.
Steve and Monica got married in Britain in 1967 and have two children – Mark, 50 and Kirsty, 48.
She said: “Whenever we play the songs it is so emotive. Steve has been deteriorating and can’t speak anymore.”
“We have a guitar as one of the models. This links to the song La Paloma by Andre Rieu which Steve asked a guitarist to play to me in a restaurant.”
She says the technology is amazing as it helped her reconnect with her husband.
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