Created with music, memory and care.
I’m Zena Carina. I create personal songs for families who want to remember someone they love in a way that feels intimate, beautiful and true.
Because every ordinary life leaves an extraordinary story.
A personal song doesn’t simply tell someone’s story. It becomes part of the way they’re remembered.
I created A Song For Life because I wanted families to have something they could return to — not just in the first days of grief, but years later, when they simply want to feel close again.
The details that bring someone back to us.
Music has a remarkable way of bringing people back to us. It can hold the things people struggle to say out loud. It can bring back a room, a voice, a laugh, a place, a feeling.
Music, memory and care have shaped my life.
A Song For Life began long before I knew I was creating it.
The soundtrack of my childhood
I come from a mixed English and Jamaican heritage, and from as early as I can remember, music was woven into everyday life.
My father, affectionately known as King Bob, was part of London’s Blue Beat and basement party scene in the 1960s, filling our home with reggae, ska and the sounds of Jamaica. My mother loved having Classic FM playing, alongside the voices of Eva Cassidy, Barbra Streisand, Shirley Bassey, Mahalia Jackson and Carlene Davis.
Irish neighbours, pubs and social clubs meant Irish folk songs were never far away either. Without realising it, I was growing up surrounded by an extraordinary range of music, each style quietly teaching me something about melody, harmony, emotion and storytelling.
The little girl at the piano
I learned classical piano as a child, but I was always wandering away from the music on the page and making up songs of my own.
I loved melody, harmony and feeling — whether it came from classical music, jazz standards, reggae, folk songs or something I was trying to invent for myself.
Long before I knew what songwriting was, I was already trying to turn feelings into melodies. I never really stopped.
What nursing taught me
Later, I became a Registered Nurse, choosing to work in critical care and eventually specialising in intensive care. I loved the science, but the deepest lessons were always human.
When treatment comes to an end, what remains is love, family, dignity, kindness and the story of a life well lived.
The conversation I’ll never forget
When my own father was dying, we did what our family had always done. We played music.
The night before he died, a palliative care nurse gently asked whether he understood what was happening to him. Bob Marley was playing quietly beside his bed. He paused for a moment and said:
“I think people tend to frighten themselves. I think music is good for you. It makes you feel better.”
He died peacefully the following day. I have never forgotten those words, or the calm with which he spoke them. Looking back, I realise that moment quietly shaped what A Song For Life would one day become.
Where everything came together
As a nurse, I had seen music bring comfort to patients and families. As a daughter, I felt its power for myself.
That experience brought the different parts of my life together: music, nursing, memory and care.
Every song starts with a conversation. Together we gather the details that made someone unmistakably themselves — the sayings, stories, laughter, quirks, music, places and love — and shape them into something lasting.
From personal songs to family legacies.
As Zena Carina, I also create my own music — songs about courage, becoming visible, rising again and choosing life.
A Song for Life is a different expression of that same creative instinct. Instead of writing from my own story, I listen to yours — and build something that helps your family remember.
I listen for the emotional centre of the person’s life — not just facts, but feeling.
I shape the lyrics so they sound natural, singable and personal, without becoming too heavy or sentimental.
I aim for a song that feels alive — something your family can play, share and return to.
Because love doesn’t end when a life does.
Sometimes it simply finds a new way to be heard.
Let’s create a song that sounds like them.
Whether their life was quiet, colourful, funny, faithful, musical, complicated or full of ordinary beauty, there is a song that can honour them.