Huffington Magazine Issue 49 | Page 49

DYING TO LISTEN HUFFINGTON 05.19.13 The lyrics aren’t religious, and are meant for those who may be spiritual but don’t follow a strict dogma. for nurses and doctors. Once at a hospital in California, says Munger, two of her singers were pushed to sing for a patient who was in pain by a “desperate” nurse, even though they had not been invited. “So they started singing for Mr. Jones who sat bolt up in bed and ordered them out.” WHILE MORE EXPERIENCED choirs have seen broad success in gaining membership and clientele, it’s a struggle for the newcomers in D.C. People come and go. Synakowski and her husband, Ed, are the constants, though others have started to come more regularly. She says local hospitals and hospices have be “very receptive” to the idea, thought she still doesn’t know who, exactly, the choir will sing to. “You can’t just go around saying you are singing to people who are dying in beds. Some people are very uncomfortable with it,” Synakowski says. “I’m confused about how to market it.” When she’s asked to explain what she does or when she makes a flyer, she leaves the concept a vague: “We sing to people at tender times.” With a group so focused on the dying, its rehearsals are often equally meditations and conversations on death as they are chances to harmonize. In the middle of the April practice, Synkowski asked singers to reflect on the role of music in transitions and what led them to the music and the dying. Laureen Gastón, the acupuncturist who found one of Synakowsi’s flyers at Starbucks, talked about her mother and sister, who died four weeks apart a year ago. She first learned of Threshold Choir songs last summer while attending a community singing group at church during a vacation in Maine. “At the time, I thought that the idea of a Threshold Choir was intriguing given my latest losses and how much I sang at their bedsides. It made sense that others would do the same for their loved ones, but to hear about an organized group was news. Last night, I found myself singing those songs, and it transported me right back there to the ones I love,” Gastón said. “My brother had died from cancer. His favorite song was called