Hospice choirs bring peace, comfort

NEWTON, Mass. — The singers enter single file, taking slow, deliberate steps as they intone a soft melody.

Norman Doelling, an 85-year-old who recently had a stroke, is there waiting, an audience of one, eased into a recliner in the home in the Boston suburbs where he has lived for decades.

“I guess I lived too long,” he said, joking in a halting voice after serenading ended. “It was very charming. I have a great deal of appreciation. It was very nice of them to come and sing to an old man.”

The eight mostly older women are members of JourneySongs, one of hundreds of hospice choirs around the world.

The all-volunteer a cappella groups sing when invited at the bedsides of elderly and terminally ill people in hospitals, nursing homes and private residences. They offer calming melodies meant to bring comfort to relatives, caregivers and their loved ones.

“We’re all about doing peaceful, quiet and uplifting songs,” Kate Mason, the coordinator for JourneySongs, said. “It’s almost as good as a touch. We touch people with love through our music.”

Jean Doelling said she invited the choir as a way to brighten the day for her mostly bedridden husband, who had worked for decades at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“It just described what we’re experiencing,” the 83-year-old Jean said after the group quietly filed out of the house. “Norman is a very happy, content person. We’re experiencing the autumn of our life, and we’re doing it together.”

Singing to the dying has been done for centuries worldwide, mostly in the privacy of people’s homes, said Kate Munger, founder of Threshold Choir, a Santa Rosa, Calif., group. But as end-of-life care moved to hospitals and nursing facilities, those traditions eroded, she said. Hospice choirs are, in some ways, trying to fill that void.

“It’s difficult and challenging work, but it’s also deeply satisfying,” Munger said.

Munger formed her group in 2000 after singing to a dying friend who had AIDS. The nonprofit organization now has more than 100 chapters across the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Dozens of volunteers recently gathered at a music school in Littleton, Mass., about 40 miles north of Boston, for the twice-monthly rehearsal of the Threshold Singers at Indian Hill Music, a group affiliated with Munger’s organization. Seated in a circle, members took turns sitting in a chair in the center as groups of singers performed alongside, much as they would to a patient.

“It’s the least ego of any singing that I’ve done,” Charlotte Russell, the group’s music director and a voice instructor, said. “It’s not about standing out as a soloist; it’s about comforting the person who is dying and also giving their family a little respite.”

Singing experience generally isn’t a requirement, and volunteers aren’t trained as hospice care workers.

Choirs affiliated with the Threshold Choir sing spare melodies that are often just a simple phrase — “You are not alone. I am here beside you” is a commonly used one — repeated in different vocal styles by small groups of two to four singers.

JourneySongs, the group that visits Norman Doelling, takes a slightly different approach. The members perform a wide range of songs from different faith and world traditions, as well as some popular music. They also opt for larger groups of singers. But most choirs, regardless of their approach, will ask a few questions in advance to get a sense of the person’s personality and what songs might be appropriate.

On this particular day, the JourneySongs singers know that Norman was a competitive sailor and that the couple sailed frequently from New England’s waters to the Bahamas. They do a rendition of “Crossing the Bar,” a sea-themed Alfred Lord Tennyson poem often interpreted as a metaphor for a person’s final journey in life.

Jean’s face lights up.

“That was always a favorite of Norman’s,” she said.

Her husband nods. “That was very nice.”