New and old memories for dementia patients

This is a story about how a photo book or photo video montage can help a dementia patient build new memories based on old photographs.

My aunt started looking for her husband about a couple months ago.  This is a new twist to her dementia condition.  No, this is not a story of a dementia woman looking for her spouse who has been dead for many years already.   Her husband is right there in the same room with her.   Though she can’t understand why she feels comfortable, a sense of familiarity, with this gentle grey-haired old man, she insists he’s not her husband.  Her husband is young, about thirty-ish, and handsome as can be.

If you’ve not had a loved one suffer this condition, it may be very hard for you to understand how frustrated, earnest and insistent the loved one can be about her view of the world.  You may succeed in correcting her after you turn blue explaining thirty years have passed.  She may reluctantly accept this gentleman as the man she married, then relapse again the next day.

Since it’s so difficult to correct her memories, we helped her build new ones.  Her children gathered photographs all the way back from her wedding day, scan the photos to digital images, and b

uilt a video montage that spans 30 years, from her wedding days, to when the kids were young, including vacation trips with her husband when they were in their thirties, forties, fifities, all the way to the present.  All in all, we used 156 photos, and created a 14 and a half minutes of music video montage that was beautiful, touching, and memory-building.

Photo memories slideshow

Maybe it’s too early to tell, but for the last couple of weeks since she watched the video montage – over and over and over

again – she has accepted this kind, gentle older man who reaches out his hand to hold hers ever so often, as her sweet husband after all.

 I am a memory keeper.  I’m not a therapist or physician – who knows if this is conventional therapy for dementia patients, but if you have someone in your family suffering from dementia, it may be worth a try to build a memory book or memory video slideshow spanning the decades of years that have blurred in their minds.

Related Posts:

Create a birthday Rock Star

Once you scan your photo you can create a birthday rockstar

Everyone wants to be a rock star right?  Well using JibJab you can turn yourself or
your friends into rock stars.  You’re probably tired of those boring old
greeting cards you pick up in the pharmacy anyway,  so why not create a
fun and exciting greeting using JibJab.  Watch this video from Play It
Again Video to see just how to create one.

 

Video-Editing: a great way to share your vacation trip

Jerusalem pilgrimage with Cardinal O’Malley

This long time Play It Again Video customer went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.  He came to Play It Again Video to make the memories of his special trip even more special.  Although his trip followed in the footsteps of Jesus he did not travel to places in the same order.  So after having Play It Again Video transfer his tapes he had us edit his videos together so they would follow the same order to create one very special DVD.  Play It Again Video can help you with your amazing video editing projects.

101 Memory Gifts Ideas

After you digitize your old photos and slides, videos and audio cassettes to digital formats, you can do so much more with them such as creating photo iphone cases, music video montage, etc.
Photo Puzzle
We put together the best 101 Memory Gifts ideas to get those creative juices going. They are grouped in price ranges. We are not affiliated with any of the vendors. You don’t even have to go to the vendors on the list. Just get the idea and run with it.

Have fun. Mother’s Day is coming, Father’s Day, memory gifts make priceless precious momentos.

The link (share them with your friends):

101 Memory Gifts: http://www.playitagainvideo.com/101memorygifts

Customer returned to Play it Again Video for the 9th time!

This customer keeps finding new staff

George is an amazingly loyal customer of Play It Again Video.  He has been here 9 times!  He just keeps finding more and more stuff. Martin Scorsese may not have shown up yet, but George you are our Martin Scorsese. Thank you George!

 

Wife surprises husband with old home movie


Karen and husband were vacationing in Maine

Video Transfer cheaper than Psychotherapy

Karen, a Newton mom, brought in a huge collection of family video tapes of her family vacations, trips, kids’ recitals, etc

.  It was her insurance. she said.  One day, there’s a chance, growing up in our blame culture, her kids will lament in a psychotherapist office that their parents hadn’t paid enough attention to them.  She would then whip out her VHS tape, 8mm tape, miniDV tape and photos and slides to show them all the vacations a

nd trips they did together as a family.

A customer came in last week with a stack of her children’s photos.  She asked us to digitize the photos, create a music video montage, burn the video on a disc, and make copies of the discs for each of her 6 children.  She absolutely loved the video montage that Alison, our Scattered Pictures Video Montage designer, created for her.  She mailed off the DVD to her 6 kids in various parts of the country.  A week later, when she came back to the store for other video transfer projects, she told Alison that one of her kids who has not spoken to her for 8 years, called to thank her.

Yesterday, a customer asked us to transfer a VHS tape to a DVD in 24 hours.  Normally it takes 3 to 5 days.  Fortunately we do all our video transfer work in-house so we could accommodate the rush request.  Why did he need it in such a hurry?  His mother was suffering from dementia, in the hospital, and he was sure that watching videos of her life would help jog her memory back.

Videos are powerful.  They conjure up a time when everyone got along, everyone was younger, simpler, happier.  A walk down memory lane may be the doctor’s prescription to family fights, premature memory loss, strained relationships.  I’ll end with a quote from the French poet, Cesare Pavere: “The richness of life lies in the memories we have forgotten.

Can you remove my ex from the photo or video?

Your old photos capture a point in time that you have moved from. 

Remove ex from photos

A point in time when your kids were little, and now they have kids of their own.  A point in time when your mother pushed you on the swing, and now she’s not so mobile.  A point in time when you were married, and now you’re not.

So once in a while, when customers bring their photos to scan to digital images, they asked us if we can remove their former spouses, former boyfriends, former mother-in-laws (never former children yet, thank goodness!).

Of course we can!  Our photo restoration experts can do anything.  But we try to talk them out of it.

Your former EXes are part of your history.  And your history is part of what makes you who you are today.  Celebrate your history.  There are gifts to be found.

My own wedding photos lasted longer than my marriage.  Instead of dwelling on the death of a marriage, I celebrated the Gifts of a marriage in this video.

Related Links

Photo Scanning: http://playitagainvideo.com/47/scanning-photos/

Slide Scanning: http://playitagainvideo.com/44/slides-to-digital/

Cropping Photos without Software: http://playitagainvideo.com/howto/357/crop-photos-the-easy-way/

 

Man Connects Long-lost Vintage Photos to Owner

A facilities manager at a nursing home discovered bags of old vintage photographs while cleaning up the center in 2005. After 8 years of dogged persistence and resourceful sleuthing, he tracked down the family’s living relatives. “I just couldn’t throw them out. My interest in genealogy started when my grandmother passed down a photo album from the 1860s.”

Read the full story at:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/14/us/photos-returned-to-families/

Related Links

Happy Holidays Macareindeer Video

Happy Holidays from all of us at Play it Again Video. Hope you enjoy the silly video above. The sentiment is sincere though. We thank you for choosing Play it Again Video over and over again.

2014 will be our 28th year! If not for your support, business, repeat business and stories, we would not still be here.

We’ve been feeling extra creative lately. In addition to our Holiday Greeting Macareindeer video above, we created a special gift for you: An ebook of 101 Memory Gift Ideas you can download at:

http://playitagainvideo.com/101memorygifts

We wish you a wonderful holiday season and a very Happy New Year!

Play it Again Video Team,
Andy, Alison, Matt, Myrtha, Natasha and Qiu