In March 2003, during the final week of Dinah Breunig’s life, a group of friends from church and community surrounded her bed to sing for and with her while she lay dying.  On two different evenings, over 30 people came to help Dinah pass over on the wings of the songs she so loved in her life.  It was during those evenings, our voices joined in harmony, our hearts  open with grief and love, that Hallowell was born. We have been singing this way ever since, in groups anywhere from 4 to 35, quiet reverent songs over a person in their last hours, or songs of joy and spirit for someone in hospice care but still fully alive in their dying weeks.

 We have been invited to sing in homes, hospital rooms and nursing homes.  We have sung while family members held onto their dying loved one and wept.  We have sung in a room where one quiet soul lay alone on her passing journey.  Wherever we are, and whenever we blend our voices in harmony, it seems the angels do come and stand among us.  And Dinah’s spirit is with us too, smiling down on us, blessing this ministry which is her legacy.  As you listen to the music, imagine the songs guiding a soul across the threshold from this world to the next and feel the angels hovering round.

A Ministry is Born

by Kathy Leo

   Imagine a room full of soft evening light, a small woman with a big spirit lies on her bed, a curl of her former self, she is propped up by pillows, attached to an oxygen tank, surrounded by her family.  Her daughters and husband sit on either side of her.  And the room fills with people who have come to sing for and with her,  people who have known and loved her have come to circle around her death bed and sing her over.  Two evenings during this woman's last days of life, her bedroom overflowed with friends from her church and community spilling into the hallway, singing songs like Angels Hovering Round, I Will Guide Thee and Waters of Babylon in four part harmony.  And the angels did come.  Everyone there felt it.

I consider Hallowell to be one of my hospice client's many parting gifts.  After her death, the singing went on and on, at her service of course, and even a year later on the anniversary of her death gathered at her house.  We all returned to sing and remember.  It was after her death that Hospice asked me if I could possibly create a group that could offer singing as another of the many services we offer at Brattleboro Area Hospice.

        I asked Mary Cay Brass and Peter Amidon if they would be interested in being involved as musical directors of a hospice singing group. After they both agreed, I wrote a letter asking members of both Emerald Stream (the community chorus I sing with, directed by Mary Cay Brass) and the Guilford Church Choir ( Peter Amidon is one of three directors)  if anyone might be interested in being part of a hospice singing group.  I had no idea what to expect.  I should have realized there were other forces at work when I received 35 names of singers who wanted to be involved.  Over the past years we have been called to sing at deathbeds, in homes and hospitals and nursing homes, and at services.  My role is that of midwife, receiving the call from hospice, connecting with the family either by phone or visit depending on time,  calling on the number of singers needed and preparing and processing before and after our sing. I serve as organizer and the bridge between the hospice world and the singers.  Together with the care coordinator of hospice, we offer orientation evenings to all of the singers as a way to provide a mini-training and educate and familiarize the singers with the philosophy of hospice and to clarify their roles as hospice workers. Just as it takes a certain type of person to be drawn to hospice work, it takes a truly soulful person to offer singing for those who are dying and their families.  Hallowell is blessed with a group of truly openhearted and soulful singers.  As one client wrote to me after we sang at Grace Cottage around his dying mother, “She surely must have thought she was hearing angels.  I know she was.”

Our singing is reverent, joyful, guided. We are not performers.  Rather we are gift bearers, offering song in the spirit of gift, for ourselves as well as the people we are so fortunate to sing for.  For us, it is a great honor to be invited into the intimate space of one's passing, of a family's well of grief, and to be able to sing songs of healing and grace into this space.   The music seems to go directly to the soul in a way language cannot.  It vibrates and touches the very essence of heart.  It is a moving and powerful ministry we have been given and for every note we sing, we feel as deeply blessed as those we sing for.

“Thank you for your ministry,” one client wrote.  “Please continue the important and generous work that you do.”  There is no question that Hallowell has become an important part of our community and will continue to grow in ways we can't yet imagine.  And of course, it almost goes without saying , the spirit of my hospice client lives on in the songs we share.  I imagine as we surround a dying person with our music on this side, singing the soul across the threshold, she is singing in harmony on the other side.                                                

-- Kathy Leo

Photos

   Photos by Tom Goldschmidt
   Click on pictures to enlarge.

Hallowell brings songs to the circle each year at the Annual Hospice Memorial Garden Planting