Fall Memorial Service #1

On Thursday night, I participated in a community memorial service for one of my offices and I just wanted to do a little recap and reflect on it.

I did a few prelude of a few songs. I did "Sand and Water" by Beth Nielsen Chapman and "In My Life" by the Beatles. 

For the service itself, I did a few songs that I wrote. One of them was "I Know", which I posted about in an earlier blog. I prefaced it by talking about how, as hospice workers, we truly care about how the surviving family members cope and that we cared deeply for our patients. I did another original called "Taking You With Me", which is about how people who have died live through our memories of them. They live through thoughts, love, and moments they they've shared.

After the service, a few people came up to me and asked if I had CDs to sell. It meant a lot to me. More than last year, especially. Last year, at this time, I had only been seeing clients for about a month, so didn't have strong relationships with the families yet. This year, however, I recognized a majority of the people who attended as they were families of clients I saw throughout the year. My emotions were also touched more, because when people talked and cried about their loved ones, I knew and could still visualize those people. It was hard to sing, especially "I Know", without crying, but I managed to get through it.

Overall, I thought that there was a lot of good sharing and transitioning at the service. I also enjoyed the chance to reconnect with some of the families that I had grown close to over the last year. I hope that next year, I will be able to still be a part of this great company and helping make the lives of patients and families more special and enriched.

Septemer 11th - Music for national healing

Today is the tenth anniversary of the terrible attacks on the World Trade Center and, in some ways, the wounds still feel fresh. I specifically remember sitting in science class my freshman year of high school. It was early in the day and the teacher was watching television, told us to sit down and watch, and we did. We just watched the smoke billowing out of this building I had never heard of before. As we watched for the next two days, we learned a lot about life. We learned about hatred, we learned about resilience, and learned what real heroes looked like. We saw a plane fly into the second tower and could do nothing but watch as a few thousand people died, right on television. We saw police officers and firefighters fight the debris, trying to find jsut one more person they could help out of the rubble.

I know I'm not alone in my experience. The media still talks about it and a new sense of American pride began to manifest itself in songs about national pride. People took all stances to the mayhem. Toby Keith, very angry, states his case in "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue."

I personally don't agree with Mr. Keith. The anger, I think, was felt by millions of people, but the jump to immediate violence, I don't believe is the correct answer. I feel this anger is misdirected sadness and there are more appropriate ways to deal with this grief.

Others stood with stoicism and sang the Star Spangled Banner and Amazing Grace. It seems that everybody took these songs much more serious after 9/11. 

The song that most touched me, though, at this time was a song that seemed to symbolize the struggle of rebuilding and realizing that nothing would ever be the same again. This song reminds of the people who helped others during this time. To me, it talks about feeling invincible only to be knocked down and hurt. But it also gets back up. It's called "Superman" by Five for Fighting.

What were songs that you remember from that time? What meaning to they carry for you now?

Story: Right in the Butt

This week, I have a story. It's by the same patient who stated she planted all the tulips in Holland (http://odeenmusictherapy.blogspot.com/2011/03/story-all-tulips-in-holland.html).

Although she doesn't have dementia as a diagnosis, her memory is poor. She will tell you the same stories from session to session, and sometimes even multiple times a session. She has all the spunk in the world and she'll always point at you and say, "Now, you know me. I ain't lying. I tell it to you straight. If you don't like the truth, get out of the way!" She's also very religious, which makes this story all the more entertaining.

This is the story as I most recently heard it:
Did I ever tell you about the time I met the Pope? I was invited to a banquet in Chicago and the Pope was there. After dinner, the Pope came up to me and we started talking. As we were talking, he started smarting off to me. Now, you know me. I don't take that from anybody. So, I told him he'd better watch his mouth. And you know what he did? He smarted off to me again! So, I kicked him. I kicked him right in the butt. You should have seen the look on his face when I did that! Now, I ain't lying. I tell it to you straight. I don't take smarting off from anybody.

I hope anybody reading this does not take offense to this, or any other stories that I post. In no way am I intending to make fun of the clients I see. I am simply trying to humanize them, and show readers who do not work in hospice, what kind of characters we get. Hospice is not about death, but about life. Death is just a small part of what we work with. Life, such as the life of this particular client, is what gets us hospice workers up in the morning.

Hope you all have a great Labor Day weekend! Make sure you don't smart off to anyone. You never know if you'll get kicked in the butt!