Spring, renewal
Today, March 1, the month of spring. A great day to launch our new website, and share our goals and news. We have two new musicians joining us. They are wonderful and well-suited to playing/singing for hospice patients. Read about Sarah Issaelkhoury, voice, and Gray Dickerson, violin, on the “Musicians” page. That makes seven of us, total. We hope to have many more, because the Washington, DC area has many hospice patients at any given time who would be comforted by music as they transition.
So our goals are to increase our musician roster, raise money to support the greater numbers, and make music available to more hospice patients at their bedside.
Another goal, more broad, is to make people, who are not facing death, more comfortable with the idea of their own death. By sharing some stories and experiences of patients near the end, and contributing to the current national conversations about end-of-life, people come to terms with their mortality. By doing so, it’s easier to live in the present without fear, more fully and alive now.
Beethoven: “Music is a higher revelation.”
I’m very glad to know about what you do, both as a journalist and as a volunteer musician working in a health care setting. For more than 10 years, I’ve served as a pianist at Evergreen Health Care in Kirkland, WA., where volunteers pooled their money to buy a grand piano for the hospital’s lobby. Since then dozens of pianists have given their time, playing music to soothe the souls of patients, physicians, technicians, and visitors as they pass through the lobby, often sitting in the waiting area seating; the two-story lobby is immense and like a church amplifies the sound throughout the hospital. So I’ve seen the power of music first hand–whether it be entertaining children waiting for the birth of a sibling in the maternity ward upstairs or the grieving spouse knowing that their loved one may pass away. Here are some pieces I wrote about the power of music therapy, after 9/11, when Americans in grief following the terrorist attacks universally turned to music for solace.
“Music to our Fears” parts #1 & #2: http://www.inspirationline.com/EZINE/24MAR2003.htm/http://www.inspirationline.com/EZINE/31MAR2003.htm/
http://www.inspirationline.com/EZINE/31MAR2003.htm/
Thank you so much for writing,Francesca. You are doing great work! Maybe we’ll meet sometime.