A Really Nice Story - The Peanut Song Saga

I am on several CI forums and this was a story posted on one of them. I thought I would share it. It was sent to DB - Golden Poetry and written by Nan Rosen, a gal who received a cochlear implant. This one is a tear jerker and also stresses how important music is in our lives. Enjoy. . .

The Peanut Song Saga

"One thing my implant did for me is make it possible to communicate with my family. My husband knew sign language, and that is one reason we got on so well and married. Of the rest of my family, only my brother and his wife and sons knew sign language. Most other family members never even thought about learning to sign. My parents tried, but my father never got the hang of it. He simply could not learn a new language and they both gave it up. The one sign he did learn was "I love you." I received my Cochlear Implant in December of 1988 and it was activated January of 1989. Dr. Jon Shallop of the Denver Ear Institute told my father that I might have difficulty understanding words at first. If that happened, he should try singing a song I might remember from my childhood. He said people who once heard like I did used their memories of sound to learn to hear again with the implant. Three days after the implant was turned on, I still only heard static and loud noises. My family gathered in the living room to help me get the hang of speech. They called my name repeatedly, but I did not understand. My hearing dog got confused and started barking. That did not help, but I did start hearing a repeated sound every time he barked. Dad was sitting next to me and tried singing. He sang "The Peanut Song" about a peanut who "sat on a railroad track, his heart was all aflutter, the 5:15 came around the bend -- Toot, toot, peanut butter." At first I only heard the rhythm of the song and then I understood the words and then I heard my father's voice. It sounded exactly as I remembered it from when I was about 12. After that, I could understand words and gradually gained the ability to talk to most people. Learning to identify sounds like running water, birds and my dog's bark was fun. By the year 2000, my father developed Alzheimer's disease, a progressive disorder that robs a person of short term memories. A few years later at the age of 86, he went into a nursing home. On the last day I saw him, my brother and I visited him in his room. I tried to find something he might be able to remember and talk about. With Alzheimer's, memory loss is progressive and a person is most likely to remember things that happened deep in the past. With this in mind, I asked my father if he remembered his father's guitar. Oh, yes, he remembered that guitar and the songs he used to sing. Dad smiled and sang "I've been Working on the Railroad" from beginning to end just as his father used to sing it. When he finished, he was quiet for a minute and we both thought he was asleep, but he began to sing again and he sang the "Peanut Song." That silly song was the first thing I understood with my cochlear implant and the last thing I heard my father say before he died. The very last thing he did before we left the room was sign "I love you." Nan Rosen