DYING
TO LISTEN
HUFFINGTON
05.19.13
“I sang the same song for two-and-a-half hours.
As soon as I started singing, he started to calm.”
family wants. The tunes can be slow
or upbeat, and emotional or lighthearted, like “Take Me Out to the
Ballgame,” though most are original. At first, choirs sing two or three
songs to gauge a person’s response.
Sometimes, the recipient will move
a finger, mouth a “thank you” or
will change their breathing and relax their muscles. At the end of life,
when human functions began to
slow and cease, the signal for “I like
this” can be as simple as a blink.
Sessions last between 15 to 45 minutes, depending on the patient.
Family members are given song
sheets so they can join in or continue after the singers are gone,
though choir members themselves
prefer memorization. The lyrics
aren’t religious, and are meant for
those who may be spiritual but
don’t follow a strict dogma. It’s
rare for a choir member to witness a patient’s last breath. Most
people prefer to die alone or in
the presence of family, say singers
who have performed at deathbeds.
So far, Synakowski can sing just
10 pieces from memory. And while
she has attended choir workshops
in New York and Ohio, she has
yet to sing to the dying. Searching
fruitlessly for a choir since moving to D.C. nearly four years ago,
she became tired of waiting and
recently launched her own. Maybe
she hadn’t sung to the dying before, she thought, but she loved to
sing, was taught by the pros and
felt at ease with death.
When the D.C. singers gather,
Synakowksi doesn’t just train
them in music, but poses questions about the end of life. What
role does song play in transitions?
What do they want to hear in their
last week alive? The aim is to
steer their minds toward thinking
about the death that will soon surround them, and to weed out the
uncomfortable. She starts by sharing her own experience.
Growing up in Lincoln, Maine,
she sang in nursing homes with
her Girl Scout troop. She went
to her first funeral, for her aunt
who died of ovarian cancer, when
she was in third grade, and has
vivid memories of the open casket and the raw grief in her rather
stoic family. She was in her high
school’s chorus, and was in a gos-