Somewhere Over the Rainbow is stuck in my head today. I’m not thinking Judy Garland or the giant Hawaiian Israel Kamakawiwoʻole with the tiniest ukulele, but John’s mom, my mother-in-law. He’s with her now in Colorado Springs, not Israel, but John, though she and Israel may be together soon it seems, Barbara is in the later stages of dementia. She doesn’t know that her son is there with her for three weeks, making her meals, taking her for walks, bathing her, and wiping her ass. But she does know the piano. Show tunes. Her home is filled with bookcases full of sheet music. Irving Berlin. Cole Porter. George Gershwin. Harold Arlen’s name is not as famous s these, his tune is possibly more so.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow has been one of Barbara’s mainstays for decades. She plays it with all the flourishes of an extravagant French dessert a Gateau Basque or a Tarte Normande...

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