My mom lives more than 160 miles from me. She is 94 with severe dementia.

When I go and stay with her (about once a month) I sing to her, old songs that she might recognize — “Over the Rainbow,” “My Favorite Things,” “Try to Remember,” “When the red red robin comes bob bob bobbin along…..” I have a below average singing voice, but my singing seems to calm her down.

Tonight, 160 miles away, she wouldn’t calm down, and my brother was at his wit’s end. So I started singing to her over the telephone, and it worked. Now I have to figure out how to record some of those songs and burn them on a disk or get them onto an mp3 player so that I can send them to her — a medley of old songs to ease the demented mind.

Hey, whatever works.