Death comes to us all. It has been said that Father Time is undefeated, and yet Western cultures overlook it. Groups like the Threshold Choir are helping people transition with songs of comfort.
There are more than 175 chapters of the Threshold Choir nationwide since Kate Munger founded the organization in 2000, according to its website. Rhode Island is represented by chapters in Providence and Westerly.
Munger’s idea for the choir came in June 1990 when she sang for a friend who was in a coma.
“It comforted me, which comforted him,” she said.
Munger’s vision is vibrant in Westerly, where choir members have found that not only have their songs comforted those who are transitioning, but also provided peace and healing to the singers.
Here is a conversation with some members of the Threshold Choir. The complete interview can be found here.
The Threshold Choir is a secular organization that helps people who are transitioning at the end of their life.
“There must be some way to support people before you get to say a celebration of life or a funeral,” Kathryn Aaron says. “A threshold choir is a group of volunteers who learn a very specific kind of repertoire to sing at (the) bedside for those who have entered palliative care or perhaps hospice care.”
‘It’s such a gift’
The calming, dignified voices of choir members support not only the patient, but also the people who are supporting that patient.
“I’ve been a singer in choirs all my life at church and in the course of Westerly, I have done it naturally,” choir member Kristy Armstrong says. “When someone’s been on the threshold, I just go to their bedside and sing on my own, I didn’t know there was an organized way of doing it.
“It’s such a gift, and it’s a gift for the singer and for the recipient.”
The singers say they feel uplifted every time they sing for a transitioning patient. They offer themselves up in a vulnerable way that comforts and soothes the person who is transitioning.
“There’s one song we sing, I always think of the people in Ukraine when we sing it, it’s called “Weight of the World,’” Aaron says. “And we all take a corporate breath and we sing the same notes and the same words and can reach a common understanding.”
Aaron says the Threshold Choir “distills” that understanding.
“It gives you the space to just be together and go, ‘Yeah, that’s really tough, but it’s worthwhile,’” she says. “And the grief that you feel, even when it’s painful, can be a very beautiful thing.”
It is a peaceful, easy feeling.
