27 May Hallowell at Rest

The Quiet Reflective Days of Hallowell
by Kathy Leo

Hallowell is resting, like so much of the world during this time of change. We are quiet and wondering. Socially distanced. Humming from our own homes and surroundings. We are not visiting people in their homes. We are not singing around the bedsides of our dying neighbors. We are not even singing with each other. The word is that singing is one of the quickest ways to spread the virus. The required distance between singers is 16’ apart. Wind direction and wind speed is a factor.

When the virus first forced us home and separated us, we cancelled rehearsals. We sent out packages of CD’s to all of the nursing homes and facilities, hoping our voices could still be heard within the places we once visited. We imagined that once the weather warmed, we would stand outside in small socially distanced groups singing to the open windows of clients in their rooms or families gathered on porches. But it is not time yet for even this kind of offering from Hallowell. And so we wait. And we practice patience. And we trust that someday, we will know how to reshape ourselves and how we might offer our songs to the community.

It seems a time for reflection then. When so many are dying alone, dying a strange and frightening death in hospitals, when there is so much fear and grief in the world, we can turn inward. We are grieving what we miss. We are feeling deep confusion and sadness that we cannot offer comfort the way we have for the past seventeen years, especially now, when the need is greater than ever. The essence of Hallowell, of all bedside singers across the world, is the physical presence we bring to each and every sing. With that presence comes kindness and compassion. Witnessing someone’s life ending. Standing close to grief, to love and singing the words to say we see you, we are here with you. What makes us whole is the way we find each other’s voices right beside us and lean into that sound to make a vibration that fills the room, that sends the blessing we intend. We cannot do these things from a distance.

What we can do from a distance is remember. We remember the hundreds of families we have been so touched by, the places we have been invited to sing. We have been at the bedsides of our own Hallowell members, of a young child, of a one hundred and four year old woman. We have sung for our own close friends and for strangers who became friends after just one visit. We have sung for a person all alone and became the family. Or we have watched a family climb into bed, wrap their dying mother in arms and tears while we circled them with songs. We have stood so close to a person dying our breath mingled with their final one. We have bathed the dying in our close harmonies. Helped people find a rhythm, a way to settle into the labor of dying. We remember what it felt like to be so close to dying and unafraid. To see the light there, the love. To be amazed and blessed and filled with grace and awe for the courage and wonder of people facing their death. We have been gifted by the emotions displayed by the ones loving this person leaving, gifted by the strength and kindness of each other. We have integrated all of these experiences. We have felt the deepest and most respectful kind of gratitude for what we have learned from our years of service through singing for the dying.

We are resting now. We have time for reflection and to put our practice to use during this time of pandemic. We may not be able to be physically together and to stand around a bedside and sing. But we can draw from and practice the kindness, the compassion and the presence we learned. We can remember how to be in the moment, one breath at a time, when the days are hard. How to stand still in wonder and awe as the world changes and grief looms large in the winds of the whole world. We bring our practice of beside singing into our daily lives, and when the world feels shaky and times of uncertainty arrive with fear, we can bring ourselves back to the circle of song, filled with grace and acceptance, and lean into trust and wonder and each other, if only in our hearts.

What follows on the next page are a few voices of Hallowell singers, remembering and reflecting:

Leslie Goldman:
It was a beautiful summer evening in August 2019. My friend and two dogs took a walk up the hill to view the sun on the trees and on the way down my 50 pound terrier lab mix came joyfully charging down the hill at full speed and ran into my right leg, totally unintentionally. She was shocked as I was and started licking my face. Both bones in my lower leg broke into pieces. After extraction off the hill and surgical repair I was able to come home. Two weeks later a dear friend died of multiple myeloma. What a time…

I sing with Hallowell and I was so grateful when they proposed to come and sing for me. Picture a king sized bed with me sitting with my leg propped up surrounded by seven Hallowell singers. We all sang together with me picking my favorite songs and others picking theirs. We sang for the shocking experience of my injury,
we sang for the loss of my friend. Tears were flowing with the music speaking directly to my grief and loss.

It was my first experience to be a receiver of Hallowell’s music and love. I felt so held that night and the memories still soothe me. I am honored and grateful to be part of such an amazing group of singers and now truly understand first hand the impact of our work.

Larry Crockett:
It seems to be characteristic of me to imagine worst-case scenarios. I think it is a very old strategy for arming myself against disaster – part of an “expect the best, prepare for the worst” philosophy. Since I am 87 years old, I have not unreasonably imagined that I will contract Covid-19 and die of it. But even more, that in my last days, I will be isolated from those I love, and die alone. And that, of course, means not only that my loving wife and son will not be at my side, but also that after almost 20 years of singing for others in Hallowell, I will not have the blessing of Hallowell there in the room singing for me. I have entered into this imagining so vividly that I have developed a deep empathy for those – and they are many – for whom this is no fantasy but a stark reality. My heart goes out to them and their loved ones in this special form of grief. But I have also experienced a comforting certainty- that as I am lying there alone in a hospital bed, members of Hallowell are gathering in a field somewhere and are singing for me: Crossing the Bar, Joy of Living, Love Call Me Home. Yes, and they have invited Ellen and John to be present there with them – appropriately distant but yet emotionally very close – and we are all wonderfully united in spirit. I just know that. -That is what Hallowell is.

Who knows what will actually happen? But I know that if I have to die under the draconian conditions of isolation occasioned by this pandemic, I will not be truly alone. And I pray that might be true somehow for others as well.

Eliza Greenhough:
We sang for a lady in the hospital. Her family and friends were all around her, on the floor, sitting in chairs, in bed with her. Our singing was for all of them. It makes my heart hurt to think of people dying in this time of sickness without being surrounded by their loved ones, without music to send them off.

Walter Slowinski:
I took a look around the apartment
To gather some sense of who is this woman we are about to sing for
Looking for clues
What might be right to sing

She lies mostly motionless in the adjacent bedroom
Gently breathing
Unresponsive except for some subtle movement of her eyes behind closed lids
Tended by an attentive and loyal care-giver, now friend
Someone who has joined her these past two years
Witnessing the decline, the decrescendo

There’s a piano, a music stand with a score
Classical CD’s, a substantial collection
A sense of order,
a warm and welcoming formality,
everything in its place,
hard work,
persistence,
careful attention and appreciation,
gratitude,
a rich life well lived

She was a music teacher, well travelled

I depart briefly and return with the three other singers
Our small group gathers around her lying in her small and spare bedroom
Elderly hospice volunteer quietly joins the caregiver at the door

We sing quietly, almost in whispers
Songs mostly in other languages
We offer sound, not words
Our well-blended voices envelope, bathe, her
and us,
and the two at the door
Reverent, celebratory
Restrained joyfulness
Testimony to this beautiful life

We help create, and enter into
Sacred space

Without comment we depart softly
Noting tender tears

Susan Bell:
You’re so right about the solace of remembering! Past sings have been rising up in my memory often in the past several weeks, without my even searching for them — the people, the songs we sang, the settings, even the time of day and the weather. Who was in the car as we traveled there and back, what it was like to gather afterward — all coming back much more clearly than I would have expected. Just goes to show how profound these experiences were, and continue to be.

Sue Owings:
If I had to pick just one thing I miss the most during this pandemic, (besides frequent contact with close friends and extended family), it would be my intimate experiences as a Hallowell singer.

I have often shared with others that when offered the opportunity to sing at someone’s bedside, it never fails that the gifts given to us by the bedridden are what I remember most. I know they are listening and our music often comforts them, but how remarkable is it that in their last breaths or days on earth their eyes or their whispers express their gratitude for our music? The peace they share with us resonates deeply in my heart.

When I read or hear about people dying alone due to the necessity of quarantining, my heart breaks and I pray at the very least that there is music in the air as they accept their journey to the other side.