All is Calm: Snapshots of Holiday Music
Greetings complementary team members and scholars. Music therapy is a welcomed addition to this informative and prestigious website. I am proud to be representing the work of my esteemed profession and to expand the current vision of Therapy Times which is already recognized as an outstanding forum for physical,registered dieticians, occupational,speech and respiratory therapists. Web-based interactive communities provide potential for therapists where interacting and networking with colleagues enhances our unified efforts to improve patient care. Music therapists are all about this. Collaborative play is part of our daily work. How wonderful to have an interdisciplinary community Web site for all of the allied therapy professionals.
Holidays in communities mark reflective moments for patients and staff alike. At Beth Israel Medical Center, at The Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine, our team of music therapists and interns (and often joining allied staff) take one full day during this time of year to carrol/play on each and every unit of the hospital. We strive to include a multi-cultural smorgasboard of melodies, and we present some unusual arrangments. Unlike a music therapy session, this is not the forum of a therapy encounter, where a therapist would address particular goals in a personal way. Rather, we see this as a 'community' ritual. Once a year we bring together staff and provide good cheer to an often stressful time of year. Beyond the stress of being hospitalized, holidays tend to remind patients of past memories, with loved ones who may no longer be alive. This can, in turn bring up fear and lonliness for many. What an important time to have music available, and in particular, live music. This is our gift to the hospital.
Caroling and playing for 7 hours is exhausting and rejuevinating, at the same time. I am always moved at the images that stay with me by the end of the day...This year it was an elderly couple, from one of our ICUs, who were seated in separate spaces, seemingly each in their own worlds. The husband in his bed, hooked up to a ventilator, and his wife, gazing outside the window of their room, seemingly somewhere else. The nurse motioned us to move into this particular space, which was shared by four other patients in their beds. As the the second phrase of the song unfolded "...all is calm, all is bright" ---the wife stood up and walked over to her husband. She moved her hand to his cheek, and their eyes came to meet. And as she held him, they looked at our team singing. She smiled and his eyes teared. One of the nurses took some bells, and for the moment of the song, which was 'Silent Night', the room was radiant. The patients and staff were in the place of a sacred music space, and there was such gentleness and human-ness in those moments. How wonderful to have the gift of music in our lives. I am grateful and humbled to come into the space of music each and everyday and within the therapeutic encounter. I am honored to be a part of Therapytimes.com and the editor of the music therapy blog. Happy and healthy to all.
