The area of Music Therapy that I have the deepest connection to is Palliative Care, which is the care and treatment of the dying. To me it’s kind of like being a midwife to the dying. There are some folks who are gifted to help bring people to the planet. And there are folks who are gifted to care for people as they prepare to leave.

It is too difficult, in just a few sentences, to fully explain what goes into being a Music Therapist. First let me say that, while I received my preliminary training at Capilano College, I did not complete the program and thus I am not a “licensed” music therapist. That being said… I, nevertheless, have felt the call to be a “midwife” to the dying.

Some of my experiences:

I entered the room with my Guitar. The patient was an elderly Jamaican men who was dying of cancer. I asked if he would like to hear some music. He said yes. I asked what kind of music that he liked and discovered that he liked gospel. I played and sang a couple of songs for him. He seemed to really enjoy the experience. He told me that he had been a traveling minister back home. And that he had played the guitar. With the aid of the nurse, He played and sang a song for me. When I left the room he smiled. I felt that, at least for a short time, he was taken away from the pain of his cancer and given a chance to reconnect with a happier time in his life. When I returned the next day he has passed.

He had been a successful businessman. He had been very athletic and out going socially. Now after an extended fight with illness he had come to the palliative care unit. His wife and mother had been keeping constant vigil in his room since he was admitted. I came in with my guitar and asked if he would like to hear some music. He said from behind his newspaper that perhaps his visitors would like to hear something. I found out that they liked folk and country western songs so we sang a number of them. Pretty soon he had forsaken the paper and was joining in… (in spite of breathing difficulties) I seem to remember him playing a couple of the tunes that I didn’t know. His wife and I made a real close connection, both of us coming from the same “faith tradition.” The night of his passing I received a call to come to the hospital. They all knew that the time was near. There was a small CD player in his room gently playing. His loving family was around his bed… each one saying those things that come pouring out of the heart at times like this. When he was ready… he breathed his last. I sang for the family at his funeral. We have maintained a close connection to this day.

He was a very young child who had received a severe brain injury. He was strapped into a wheelchair… his was face frozen in that distant stare that often accompanies this kind of severe injury. From the outside he looked like nothing could possibly get through to the little boy with such a massive list of injuries and disorders. But when I sat down beside him and started to play my guitar and sing… his eyes brightened and his fingers began to move in time with me. He could hear. The little boy inside was playing along…

He was in the palliative care unit because of congestive heart failure and cancer. His finger were stained the colour of amber from years of smoking. His face betrayed the puffiness of an alcoholic who had lived on the streets for a long long time. He had to have a tank of oxygen with him at all times. Except, of course, while indulging in life long ritual of smoking his hand rolled cigarettes. The thing about him that I remember the most is that he played a mean honky tonk piano. At each of our visits we would take him to the sitting room where there was an old upright piano (that, like him, had seen better days) we would sit there and play old favourites then take a break to go and roll one and have a smoke. And then he would return to play more until his energy ran out or it was time for lunch. He was moved to a hospice house. I always wondered what his real story was. What twist and turn in the road had brought him to this place.