Singing acapella in the tea room

The most important aspect of singing for me is creating harmonies with other people and filling a space with music. There’s a kind of magic created when multiple voices weave together and unfurl, blending and enhancing and expanding, the whole so much more than the sum of its parts.

This is why I have been singing in a community choir for the past three and a half years. And it’s also why I leapt at the chance 18 months ago to be part of something incredibly special.

A group of women from my ‘choir’ (which isn’t a choir in the ‘carmina burana’ sense) were hanging out together, when one of them voiced an idea. Every one of the nine other women present said yes to this idea without hesitation; and now, a year and a half later, we are still getting together monthly to sing at a local hospital palliative care unit.

As one of my fellow songsters said on Saturday, it’s the most worthwhile thing I do.

Once a month we sing acapella in the tea room, with the idea that our sound will travel down the two long corridors where the individual rooms are. Sometimes the tea room is mostly empty, with the occasional staff member or visitor wandering through; sometimes those patients who are well enough wander down to listen; sometimes we gather a bit of a ‘crowd’.

The main idea is that we fill the space with music for a time, hopefully bringing comfort to those who are dying and their visiting family.

Even when it feels like no one is listening, it’s tremendously uplifting for us; because that’s the thing about music — it travels into all the nooks and crannies of space and somewhere it’s making someone feel a bit better. It goes way beyond the simple joy of singing together.

This past Saturday, we were invited into a patient’s room for the first time. The man himself was very ill, but his daughter explained that he had been in a choir and would love to hear us sing. So, after our usual half-hour set, we gathered around his bed and sang a few songs.

Although he could not respond, he seemed to be aware and listening, and I cannot explain how moved we all were to be able to do that for him.

Each month is different when we sing in the palliative care unit, but it’s always rewarding. I know that we all gain something each time from the simple act of singing together, but it makes it so much more worthwhile to think that our music brings something to others as well.