Getting Mom to Berkeley Square on Her 90th Birthday--Two Weeks after Her Death

            For the past few days, that A Mom thought she had gotten when she was tested at the U.C. Davis Neurological Center has stood for Alzheimer’s—reviewed by the neurologist in terms of Mother (as I guess they adapt their form letters). 

            But now I’m looking for the A for Angel, which I’m pretty sure is in the lyrics for the song Mom used to play on the piano, “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”  She’d say, “On my 90^th birthday I’m going to London with some friends, and we’re going to sing that song right there on Berkeley Square.”  She continued to say this even when she was no longer traveling or even leaving the house.  She would forget that she didn’t,-- wouldn’t--go out, and she saw herself as she had been before Alzheimer’s—a woman traveling wherever she wanted to go..

            “We’re going to London and sing “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”

            That was never one of my favorite songs.  I much preferred “I’ll Be Seeing You” among the World War II songs. 

            There were so many beautiful songs in that World War II Songbook that I think Kathy still keeps on the piano.

            I didn’t think this "A Nightingale Sang" was the best of them, and I wondered that Mom, who wanted to be egalitarian, liked it so much.  What was this about angels dining at the Ritz?

That certain night,
The night we met,
There was magic abroad in the air.
There were angels dining at the Ritz,
And a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.


            She died two weeks before her 90^th birthday, but we got her to Berkeley Square anyway, and more than once.  

(Friends are due to eat and watch a DVD of retirement parties of ESL faculty at John Adams--several years.  But we'll get back to Berkeley Square!)