Wings of song sendoff

January 30, 2007

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-threshold30jan30,0,4010422.story?track=t\

othtml

COLUMN ONE

Wings of song for the dying

At the bedsides of the terminally ill, the

gentle-voiced Threshold Choirs have taken on the role

of easing the final crossing.

By Steve Chawkins

Times Staff Writer

January 30, 2007

Inverness, Calif. & #8212; IT was a simple visit to a

sick friend. In the morning, Kate Munger weeded

Larry's garden and did chores around his house. In the

afternoon, she sang sweet, soothing songs at his

bedside.

For a music teacher and lifelong member of one chorus

or another, singing was as natural as herbal tea. But

over those hours in 1990, she felt she was delving

into deep reaches of herself and pulling out

glittering, unexpected gifts for her comatose friend,

a San Francisco quilter who was dying of AIDS.

Larry's bedside would be the first of thousands at

which Munger and a legion of women she has trained

would try to help the terminally ill die in a state of

musical grace.

Today, about 30 groups called Threshold Choirs

rehearse twice a month in cities throughout California

and several other states. In small clusters, they are

invited into hospices, homes and hospital rooms where

death is near, singing soft, ethereal melodies to

people who might or might not be conscious.

Depending on whom they are singing to, the 700 women

of the Threshold Choirs might throw in a show tune or

a love song. But mostly, they create a veil of

tranquil sound for the dying and a balm for the

grieving family members around them.

" The women who sing are willing to be curious about

death, " said Munger, 57. " We like to say that our

audition process is a shiver when you hear about our

work. "

A minister's daughter who grew up in the Santa Ynez

Valley, Munger has a zest for the sacred. She says " If

Spirit wills it " the way other people say " We'll see. "

She wears a frog pendant not just because she likes

frogs but because they symbolize transformation. Her

dog is named Surely, as in the 23rd Psalm: " Surely

goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my

life. "

After Larry died, Munger did not instantly transform

herself. She taught elementary school and raised a son

with her husband, Jim Fox. For more than 14 years, she

and Fox, Inverness' volunteer fire chief and head of

the water system in the Marin County community, lived

in a trailer while they built an airy, secluded

hilltop retreat that gazes out toward Tomales Bay.

Meanwhile, she organized groups that specialized in

singing rounds, those complex compositions that depend

on themes repeating and voices entering at different

points.

But she didn't forget the simpler gift she had given

her dying friend.

*

ABOUT 10 years ago, Munger was driving back from

Montana to California when she found herself singing

to dead animals she'd passed on the roadside:

May your spirit rise safely.

May it soon become a cloud & #8230;.

It's a practice she follows to this day.

In 2000, Munger gathered 15 Bay Area women to form her

first Threshold Choir, inaugurating their service with

weekly visits to an ailing psychiatrist who ultimately

died of lupus.

Now, she puts more than 30,000 miles a year on her

1990 Plymouth van, guiding singers in the Bay Area and

beyond through lengthy, emotionally freighted

rehearsals. Groups are starting in Santa Barbara and

Los Angeles as well.

Two or three times a week, Munger is summoned to

bedsides.

" We always have to be invited in, " she said. " We don't

press this on anyone. "

One autumn afternoon at Dominican Hospital in Santa

Cruz, 94-year-old Miriam Sherwin lay ashen and

unconscious as three of Munger's singers hovered over

her. Her head was tilted back, and her breathing was

labored.

" We're going to sing to you now, " one of the chorus

members said quietly, stroking the woman's forehead.

Leaning in, the three joined in a subdued harmony. The

lyrics were simple and calming, repeated numerous

times:

We walk not into the night

We walk up toward the stars.

In a few minutes, the halting breath of the bedridden

woman became regular. Soon it stopped.

The three singers stared at one another.

Then Miriam started breathing again.

The women recognized the prolonged pause as just

another bump on the road to death. After another few

minutes of singing, they tiptoed out, and, in the

hallway, embraced.

The next day, Miriam died a death made easier, her son

Rob believes, by music.

" It was just a very beautiful, peaceful thing, both

for my mother and for me, " said Rob Sherwin, a retired

hotel executive.

Earlier, he had argued with a nurse who refused to

provide more painkillers for his agitated mother. And

he had rejected the Catholic hospital's offer of

pastoral counseling.

In a sour mood, he came across Munger and a half-dozen

choir members singing in a corner of the lobby. He

asked them to visit his mother and ended up so taken

with them that he played their CDs at her memorial.

" A few minutes of gentle singing seemed to quiet her,

and it certainly quieted me, " he said. " For the rest

of that evening, things were peaceful. "

*

MUSIC therapists often bear witness to such scenes.

" There are many situations where we don't go

peacefully, " said Russell Hilliard, director of the

National Center for Music Therapy in End-of-Life Care.

" You might have patients groaning and grimacing,

shaking their hands and reaching into the skies. "

Agitation can feed upon itself in a terrible cycle,

Hilliard said. As a patient's breathing becomes

difficult, her anxiety increases, making breathing

even tougher. But using what's known as the

" isoprinciple, " skilled therapists might offer an

agitated patient fast, loud sounds that match her

frame of mind. Gradually, the music grows calmer and

so, Hilliard said, does the patient.

" Over time, that rapid breathing gets softer and

quieter and slower, " said Hilliard, who is based at

the State University of New York at New Paltz. " We're

always amazed at how beautifully this works. "

Scientific studies are sparse. In one that Hilliard

conducted, cancer patients who received music therapy

appeared happier than their counterparts, responding

more positively to 29 questions about their pain,

their relationships and their faith.

" The closer they got to death, the higher they rated

their quality of life, " Hilliard said.

For Munger, clinical trials are beside the point.

" I'm not a scientist, " she said. " I do this from a

more intuitive, seat-of-the-pants perspective. "

In rehearsals, she stresses empathy, saying that

chorus members should confer with a patient or the

family members to make sure their music will be

welcome. She ruefully recalls the time a nurse nagged

her into singing for a man who was drifting in and out

of consciousness: " He suddenly opened his eyes and

said, 'Stop it! What the hell do you think you're

doing here?' "

Sometimes the best intentions yield exactly the wrong

music for people at their most vulnerable, Hilliard

said. A soft " Ave Maria " may stir painful feelings in

an elderly Catholic once abused by a priest. A Simon

and Garfunkel ballad from the '70s may fuel memories

of a bitter divorce.

To acquaint her singers with the experience of hearing

the music as a dying person might, Munger unfolds a

green reclining chair at rehearsals. From time to

time, one of the women will lie down as others cluster

around, somberly chanting.

A cherubic woman with a broad face and a ruddy

complexion, Munger frequently drops joking spiritual

references.

Asked about her long hours on the road, she replies:

" Yes, I'm on intimate terms with the great goddess

Asphalta. "

*

In addition to soothing melodies with titles such as

" Deeply Quiet " and " Breathe Easy, " her repertoire

includes quirky originals such as her " Anti-Tailgating

Song. "

You never know when the guy

In the car in front of you

Might be the Dalai Lama.

The singers are mostly middle-aged and veterans of

church choirs or amateur productions. About half

volunteer at hospices. All but one of Munger's choirs

is strictly female, a choice Munger said she made for

the gentle clarity of their sound.

During a break at a Santa Cruz rehearsal, singers

offered from-the-heart updates on their day-to-day

lives. They spoke of struggles with aged parents, of

plans to visit an elephant sanctuary in India, of a

husband's leukemia coming back, of old friends and new

jobs.

Many were dealing with the deaths of people close to

them.

Before her mother died of Lou Gehrig's disease, Marti

Mariette gathered some of her fellow singers around

the bedside of the emaciated, immobile 80-pound woman.

" She was on morphine, " Mariette said, " and we couldn't

really tell if she was present with us or not. " But

knowing that Colleene Mariette loved Broadway tunes,

they launched into " Shall We Dance? "

" It was absolutely amazing, " said Mariette, 50, an

artist and massage therapist. " My mother tapped her

fingers on my hand in time to the music. It gave us a

way to communicate and to know we were together. "

Ten days later, Mariette again summoned her friends.

There were 15 women singing in Colleene's room when

she died.

" It was a really sweet moment, " her daughter said. " My

mother had a tenacious hold on life, and the music

made letting go much more peaceful. Her face relaxed.

You could see the worry lines on her forehead

disappear. It gave her this gentleness she could slip

away in. "

Whether music can help a dying person let go is an

open question, said Hilliard, the music therapist.

" If music therapy really facilitates the dying

experience, we would find that therapists were the

last people at the bedside, " he said. But one of his

studies showed that people died at random times,

regardless of who last visited.

Also unknown, and probably unknowable, is whether a

person's favorite music matters in the final moments.

Therese Schroeder-Sheker, who created the field of

music-thanatology to provide musical comfort for the

dying, doubts it.

" Somehow, in the deeply layered process of 'letting

go,' many aspects of identity, including 'favorite

things,' cease being essentials, " she wrote in an

article.

If the precise mechanics of letting go remain a

mystery, Munger is certain that music eases the

troubled path to that moment. In their final hours,

people have asked to hear songs they lost themselves

to in high school, songs from their weddings, from

Cole Porter, from the Beatles.

" But if there's anything people ask for more often

than not, " Munger said, " it's a lullaby. "

*

steve.chawkins

- - -

'Selections include works from Bach and Mozart, to a

number of choir-written pieces from their book of 186

songs. Genres include contemporary to ancient sacred

rounds, chants, cowboy lullabies and songs from

various cultures and traditions.'

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/10/25/EB30398\

..DTL

January 30, 2007

Sounds very sweet. We had a harpist in when my husband died. it was painful as

it went straight to the heart, so emotions came right out. They believe in not

playing recognizable songs (this article mentions songs triggering memories).

This group might have better luck to go with the woman's original songs, or just

do gentle harmonies with no words that are not recognizable, known melodies.

Michelle

-

dar

chinesehealing

Tuesday, January 30, 2007 5:57 AM

[Chinese Traditional Medicine] Wings of song sendoff