This was it—the moment the Threshold Choir Miami University (TCMU) had been practicing for all semester, some of them for a whole year. The six singers arrived at Hospice of Hamilton in two separate cars. The one-story building looked like a combination of a doctor’s office and a nursing home, with a large front desk in the lobby and rooms down hallways to the left and right. A family sat solemnly in the small sitting room to the right of the entrance. Busy nurses hustled back and forth in magenta scrubs.

 

Gifty, the choir’s music director and a Miami graduate student, helped the group center themselves before their performance. This experience would be nothing like their classroom rehearsals on campus or their performances at the local nursing home—this was the real deal. They quietly practiced a song in the small kitchen area while waiting for a nurse to find potential clients for them. The sound of vending machines buzzed in the background.

​

Then, it was time. Armed with just their voices and green foldable stools, the choir followed a nurse down the long hallway on the left to their first client’s room. They walked past bedrooms with open doors, housing weak-looking men and women lying in hospital beds. Josh, the Threshold Choir president, hadn’t felt nervous until this moment. He didn’t think it would be that nerve wracking—after all, this was what the choir was meant for. But their first client had family members in the room, and he didn’t know how it would go.

 

The choir members filed into a room full of strangers, assembled their stools in a half circle around an older man lying in a hospital bed, and began to sing.

​

********************

    

Gifty’s name means “gift from God.” Growing up in Ghana, she always loved to sing..

  

“In my church, they would give a time period where people can just randomly come up front and thank God for something that happened to them or just praise God, and most people would sing. So, during those sessions, I would just get up and sing,” Gifty said, shrugging her shoulders and laughing her ever-present, infectious giggle. Singing brought out her more serious, solemn side.

    

Gifty’s voice has a soft, soothing tone with subtle African inflections that perfectly parallels her gentle singing voice. For her, singing provides a safe space. When she gets stressed, she sings. It helps bring her peace.

    

And her voice has the power to transcribe peace back to its listeners. A close friend of hers in Michigan was battling cancer in 2015, during Gifty’s first year of graduate school at Miami. Gifty used to sing her Christian songs on the phone—her favorite was “The Lord Is My Shepherd.” But as her friend’s cancer got worse, Gifty always happened to have class whenever her friend was conscious and alert and couldn’t call her. She decided to record herself singing and texted it to her friend. As her friend passed away, her family played the recording of Gifty’s singing to make her transition more peaceful. They played it during her last moments, and even asked Gifty to sing at her funeral.

​

********************

    

Like, pronounced like “Leek-a,” had a similar experience and originally generated the idea to bring Threshold Choir to Miami. Very petite but very full of energy, Like grew up in Indonesia and moved to California to go to college as a foreign student in 1988 without knowing a word of English. Since then, she’s lived all over, from Hawaii to Japan to Ohio.

    

Like came across the Threshold Choir about five years ago while visiting Clifton. The organization’s founder, Kate Munger, hosted a workshop that Like decided to attend. She was studying gerontology at the time, and became interested in end-of-life issues. Like wanted to learn more about them, not only from books but first-hand. So when Kate spoke about the Threshold Choir at her workshop, and taught the participants several songs to sing with people near death, Like decided to start a Threshold Choir at Miami.

    

Her schedule got too busy and she couldn’t find enough interested students, so she let the Threshold Choir idea go for the time being.

    

In October 2015, Like’s father passed away in Indonesia from late stage cancer. Like’s brother flew in from Australia the night before he died, and recorded a church group singing to their father at his bedside. He texted Like the video, and she immediately remembered the Threshold Choir.

    

“I saw the expression on his face; he was looking around and very alert and peaceful and appreciative of all the people around him,” Like said. “When I saw that video, I realized this is what I need to for his sake and other people’s sakes. To see that reaction.”

 

Like founded the Opening Minds Through Art (OMA) program at Miami, which led her to Josh’s and Gifty’s singing talents. This program spread nationally, and it pairs dementia patients with volunteers who help them work on art projects. Right after Like’s father passed away, she found out during an OMA session that Gifty loved to sing.

 

“One Friday, I was at the studio making art with people and Gifty was my grad student. She started humming and I said, ‘Gifty, are you a singer?’” Like said.

 

Like and Gifty joined forces, and Threshold Choir Miami University was born.

​

********************

​

Created in 2000, the Threshold Choirs are a cappella groups that sing to people on the verge of death. They aim to “make kindness audible.” Gifty said that the vibrations from their voices help make passing easier for their clients.

    

Gifty and Like officially established TCMU in January 2016 with help from the Cincinnati chapter. It started out with just the two of them, Like’s husband, and two others. Threshold Choir has an online database of hundreds of songs, and requires chapters to pick 20 core songs to learn from the list. They spent the semester picking songs and practicing them. They tried to recruit more members, putting out posters and contacting the directors of the music departments.

​

Josh first met Like and Gifty last semester. He had started his senior thesis, which dealt with dementia, and emailed Like for first-hand research.

 

“It’s turned into all these other things,” he said of meeting Like. Josh started volunteering for OMA and Like eventually discovered that he loved to sing. He joined TCMU last semester, when the choir had about eight members total.

​

They split practices between Thursday evenings and Friday afternoons to accommodate everyone’s schedules, but they spent more time rehearsing than actually performing in the community.

​

Josh sings in all-guys a cappella group at Miami, but Threshold Choir performances were different. Music is the only shared similarity between the two vocal groups. For Josh, a capella meant goofing off and singing popular songs.

​

“The music may mean something or it may not,” he said. “Threshold Choir is much less about what’s on the paper. It’s about communicating a feeling.”

​

He says it was the only peaceful thing he had done in college. It lowered his anxiety and stress and helped put things in perspective. He liked TCMU because of its dedication to peace and love, both inwardly and outwardly.

    

Josh’s music connections helped find more members for spring semester. Gifty had also graduated last December, but decided to pursue another Master’s degree in social work, so she stayed at Miami. As Like put it, the stars were aligning correctly.

    

Like likes the Threshold Choir because it allows the Miami community to maintain relationships with elderly patients, especially ones from OMA. After a certain point, OMA patients are too far gone to make art, so Threshold continues the relationship with them in their next phase of life.

 

********************

​

I got my first real taste of the TCMU’s capabilities during their first rehearsal of the semester. They continued splitting the rehearsals between Thursdays and Fridays, but more people attended the Thursday sessions. This semester, the choir had doubled in size. They always had Thursday night rehearsals in a classroom in Upham Hall, but the setting did nothing to diminish from the comforting aura the group gave off during the entire hour session. Seven people came, and they made you feel welcome right away, even before the singing started. They wanted you to sit with them in the semicircle of chairs they had formed around a black foldable recliner with a camel blanket draped over it, which they used to remind them of their clients as they sang. They wanted you to sing with them, they genuinely did, even if you had no vocal talent.

 

Like always encouraged me to participate. “Blair, do you sing in the shower?” she asked before rehearsal started.

 

“Not really,” I lied.

 

“Ok, we’re going to get her to sing by the end of the semester,” she told the group. “I can’t sing either,” she reassured me. Thankfully, she gave up trying after the first few rehearsals.

 

Gifty quieted the comfortable chatter by singing “This Little Light of Mine,” which they sang at the beginning of every rehearsal. She called this the beginning song. The six other members followed suit and joined in singing.

 

Gifty passed out booklets with copies of the core songs, held together with ribbon and a glittery watercolor bookmark. “It’s from OMA,” she said, giggling. Most of the songs are short, with about four or five lines, but they’ve all been written by Threshold Choir members. Gifty herself even wrote two last year, one in a Ghanaian language.

 

When teaching TCMU a new song, Gifty always lead the group. They called that position the anchor, and only the anchor was allowed to talk to their clients during actual performances. Gifty taught them three songs during the rehearsal, singing each one individually once, swaying back and forth slowly in her chair. The second time, the group joined in, mirroring her harmony and the notes she sang. Most of the members in the room were in other Miami vocal groups, so they knew how to make a beautiful sound. A few had also been in the choir last semester and knew some of the songs already.

 

They learned the songs by ear because Gifty doesn’t have much music training and can’t read notes. Despite this, she always knew exactly what note to start each song with. She never started too high or too low—it was just right. Josh sometimes struggled with this whenever he lead rehearsals, so it must have been harder to do than it seemed. It was like Gifty’s own unique talent.

 

“Here you are, in the splendor of this moment. Here I am, with you,” they sang.

 

Even though Gifty and Like couldn’t read music, the other members took the songs very seriously, trying to perfectly replicate the notes written in their song books. One song, “My Grateful Heart,” gave them a hard time. As they sang it for the first time, they couldn’t figure out which note to sing for one of the lines. It did sound a bit off, with some singing high and some going lower. Josh sang the note differently than the one written in the song book, so they debated for a few minutes about which one sounded better so sing. One member pulled out a piano app on her phone, playing the notes from the song book so the group could hear exactly how the line should sound. They ultimately decided that Josh’s version sounded better, but they would need to remember to sing it from the song book for a Threshold Choir conference they planned to attend in September.

 

I sat behind them during the rehearsal, observing. Gifty gave me a song book, so it felt slightly awkward sitting silently while they all sang. But, I knew my voice would detract from the pleasing sound they generated. I got more comfortable just observing as the rehearsals went on during the semester. Being in their presence relaxed me, as if I were one of their clients.

 

Gifty also taught them a series of hand signals that the anchors use. A thumbs up meant sing a higher harmony, thumbs down meant lower harmony. When she pointed to herself, that meant she wanted to sing alone. Pointing to the group meant they join in. Moving her pointer finger in a circular motion meant repeat the verse. Holding up two fingers meant the group split into two parts. They used these signals during actual performances so that they don’t have to speak and deflect from the relaxing vibe.

 

Their songs all had a gentle softness to them, like lullabies a mother would sing to her baby before it fell asleep. Gifty described them as spiritual, but not religious. They were catchy enough to get stuck in your head and make you wish you could hear the choir sing them again, just to you.

They did sing to one another, taking turns at the very end of the rehearsal. Gifty told them the harmonies didn’t matter for this song, encouraging them to get creative. And this song was by far the most beautiful.

 

They sang about lending a light to you, while sitting straight in their chairs with their palms on their laps facing upwards. The level of harmonies mixed, with the girls going mostly high and Josh going slightly lower. But they came together perfectly, making it sound like they had been practicing the song for weeks. They sang to each member individually, even me— they made me join them in the semicircle. Everyone sat there peacefully during their turns, letting the sound calm them as the rest of the group sang to them. If you closed your eyes, it amplified the sound even more. The vibrations from the choir member’s voices echoed around the small classroom. They made you wish that you actually could sing well, but simply getting to even listen felt like enough of a privilege.

 

Josh’s voice stood out to me the most during rehearsal. Being the only guy in the room probably had a lot to do with this, but he had this deep, enchanting voice that stood out amidst the other voices the most. When it was his turn for the group to sing to him, the song seemed like a piece was missing without his voice included. He also hung onto the notes longer than the others, so his voice carried this deep, bass-like hum in the short pauses in between lines.

 

Josh sings baritone, which is the middle of the three bars that guys sing. Tenor’s the highest bar and bass is lowest. After hearing his voice for the first time in such a small setting, I was surprised that he didn’t identify as a bass singer. He told me that certain vocal groups in the past put him as a bass, but he doesn’t have a low enough range to be a true bass. I did actually notice a change in his voice throughout the semester. By the time the choir started performing at The Knolls of Oxford, his voice sounded slightly higher than before.

 

“Since I’ve been singing baritone, my range has gotten higher, so maybe I’ll be singing tenor next year,” Josh joked.

 

The rehearsal ended after they gave each other light, and Gifty seemed satisfied with the group’s progress and ability so far. She had a way of praising the group after each song that almost came off as surprised, as if their capabilities surpassed her expectations.

 

I helped a few other members rearrange the desks and chairs in the classroom. Then we went our separate ways to our separate lives. Until next week.

​

********************

    

TCMU had only rehearsed twice before their first performance at The Knolls of Oxford, a local nursing home. These performances were trial runs for Hospice of Hamilton later in the semester. When they arrived, the sun had just started to set on the short brick building.

 

In the lobby—decorated with a patterned loveseat, a few armchairs, and a display case filled with birds—the eight members, including Like and Gifty, split up into two groups based on vocal levels. Both groups had a soprano, someone on melody, and an anchor to lead. I stayed with Josh and Like’s group with Sophia, a freshman, and Katie, a senior.

 

Both groups had a list of residents who might enjoy the choir’s singing. I followed Josh’s group down long carpeted hallways of bedrooms, with the smell of dinner wafting from the residents’ rooms. They each carried a small, white metal stool.

 

Josh reluctantly agreed to be the group’s anchor, so he had to knock on the residents’ doors and ask if they wanted to be sung to. He knocked on three different doors, but they struck out each time—the residents were still eating their dinners or were sleeping.

 

On the fourth try, they had success. Now it was Like knocking on doors. Behind one, the singers found a woman named Bessie. She was small and frail with thin, white hair and glasses. She sat in an armchair with a blanket draped over her lap. The news blared from the TV across from her and she had a tray of dinner on a small table in front of her.

 

“Hi, we’re a choir from Miami University, and we’re here to sing to you. Would you like us to sing to you?” Like asked, entering the room confidently and flashing her wide smile. The only time I ever saw her without a smile was when she sang.

 

“Oh, I’m still eating my dinner,” Bessie said.

 

“You can eat while we sing,” Like said.

 

“Oh, ok,” Bessie said.

 

I joined Like inside Bessie’s room with Josh, Sophia, and Katie. They positioned their stools around the corner Bessie sat in. I sat behind them in an armchair. Josh resumed his anchor duties, explaining the singing process to Bessie.

 

“Ok, we’re going to sing a few songs,” he said. His voice quivered slightly.

 

His nerves seemed to fade with the first song, which he led with the first note. Like, Sophia, and Katie followed his lead. They later critiqued this song, saying that Josh started too high and it threw the rest of them off. I did notice a few times they stumbled with the notes, but I still felt mesmerized by the sound. I couldn’t help but smile. They kept their voices softer than during rehearsal, but they meshed just as well together.

Josh’s still rang out to me the most prominently.

 

Josh blocked me from seeing Bessie’s mouth, but I could see a slight glow in her eyes. Several of their clients throughout the entire semester thanked the choir by saying things like “that was great, girls,” or “thank you so much, girls,” as if Josh blended in with the others and didn’t exist. But Bessie’s gaze stayed fixated on him during the majority of the performance. She sat very still in her chair.

 

“Beautiful,” Bessie complimented them after the first song. “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,” she said after the second song.

 

When they finished singing to her, Bessie’s face scrunched up like she wanted to cry, and she spoke in slow phrases.

 

“Thank you….Heavenly Father….I love you….the beautiful music….thank you….for forgiving my sins…..with this beautiful….I need more…..beautiful music…..we are all…..forgiven…..thank you.”

 

One by one she shook their hands, thanking them again.

 

Like and Josh decided to try the Memory Unit next, where they knew Alzheimer’s and dementia patients from OMA. They led the way down more hallways to a locked set of double doors. Like punched a code into the keypad by the doors and led us into a dining room with a few tables and several residents. She honed in on one resident sitting at a table in a reclining chair with his eyes closed.

 

“Could we sing a song to Karl?” Like asked a nurse about the patient, whom she knew from OMA. The nurse agreed.

 

Little Like wheeled Karl, a large middle aged man, into his room and left the lights off. She accidentally bumped his reclining chair into his bed.

 

“Sorry I’m a bad driver,” Like joked.

 

We followed her into the room, and the other three arranged their stools in a semicircle around Karl. I sat beside him in an armchair, and I noticed his condition for the first time. He kept his eyes closed, and he had loud breaths that sounded like a car engine turning over. His arms and legs would randomly spasm. Like later told us that he had been diagnosed with dementia early and was currently in one of the later stages of the disease. The group remained serious and respectful during the performance, but they had a few slip ups during this one, too. I heard Katie quietly messing up the lyrics. At one point, Karl’s eyes opened wide and Josh signaled to continue the song one more time because of this. Unfortunately, the others didn’t catch on and he awkwardly sang the verse again alone.

 

They critiqued themselves again in the hallway afterward, but in a lighthearted way.

 

“Guys, I’ve gotten like one of these songs right,” Katie said.

 

“Yeah, I decide what to do like three seconds before,” Josh said laughing, referring to his anchor hand signals.

 

“Yeah, it doesn’t really matter. They still like it,” said Katie.

 

A small woman with dark hair and age spots emerged from the room next to Karl’s.

 

“Hi Effie,” Josh said, recognizing her from OMA. “Would you like us to sing to you, too?”

 

“Sure,” she said, seeming slightly confused. Like led her into her brightly-lit room and sat her down in one of her many armchairs.

 

Effie knew some of the songs from the Oxford Community Arts Center, where the choir performed every other Friday. She tried to sing along, mumbling words softly. She moved her hand back and forth like a musical conductor, flashing her brightly colored fingernails. Her eyes darted from person to person. They sang “This Little Light of Mine,” and her eyes lit up as she tried to mimic their singing.

 

“Good,” she congratulated them after they sang.

    

The choir reconvened in the lobby afterwards. They agreed that their first real performance had been a success.

​

********************

​

During the choir’s first Hospice of Hamilton performance, the group of six members only had time to sing for two clients. The first was a bald, older man named Harry, who sat up slightly in his hospital bed, leaning very far to the right. A plate full of food, barely touched, sat on a table in front of him. He could move slightly, but didn’t speak. One family member, most likely his daughter, sat at his bedside and rubbed his forehead. Two other adults, a man and a woman, sat on a loveseat against the far wall and two young girls, probably around 10 years old, also sat near him.

One sat in a wheelchair on the opposite side of his bed and the other sat in an armchair behind her.

 

The room was quiet when the group walked in; it set a somber tone in the intimate space. A nurse led them in and stayed near the door while they situated themselves in their stools at the foot of Harry’s bed. Gifty, the anchor, began her usual speech.

 

“My name is Gifty, and I’m here with some friends from Miami University. We’re from the Threshold Choir, and we’d like to share some songs with you today. Just relax. Our songs are like lullabies, so you can close your eyes and if you feel like sleeping, that’s awesome. That’s our goal—to make you comfortable.”

 

Gifty started singing “My Grateful Heart,” which I thought the choir sang the best. It was Josh’s favorite one, too. She sang the lines by herself once, much differently than in rehearsal. Gifty hung onto each word, prolonging the song. The slow pace made it seem much more personal and genuine, as if she somehow knew Harry. The choir joined in when Gifty pointed to them, and they also sang much slower and softer than ever before. The setting instantly changed their tone, immediately adding a peaceful ambience to the room. They had never experienced a performance with real clients, but they magically knew exactly what to do. Josh described the experience as meditative.

 

The choir members sat with their backs hunched, leaning forward toward the clients. Their gazes fixated on the clients, and some even closed their eyes to focus on the sound they produced. I watched their throats quiver at the end of each note as their voices tried to carry for as long as possible. Each song sounded more lullaby-esque than ever.

 

Harry closed his eyes for most of the performance, with his mouth hanging wide open. The woman beside him continued to stroke his forehead, sitting with her back to the choir. The adults on the couch both played on their phones while the choir sang, which made Like mad. Constant “Bing!” noises interrupted their songs, but the choir paid no attention. The two younger girls seemed mesmerized, sitting still and looking back and forth from Harry to the members of the choir.

 

They sang four more songs: “So Many Angels,” “Bringing You Peace,” “Rest Easy,” and “Sending You Light.” Gifty always stayed silent in between songs for a few moments to lead up to the next one, but I noticed she took shorter pauses than usual.

 

“That’s so beautiful. You like that, Pappy? Sound good, don’t they?” the man on the couch asked during one of the pauses, standing up and moving to Harry’s bedside. “You should get your trumpet out. He played the trumpet in front of the state fair one time when he was just a young kid.” Gifty nodded in acknowledgement and continued singing.

 

“We have one more song for you, and then we’ll take our leave,” Gifty said to wrap up each performance.

 

By the end, it seemed like Harry had fallen asleep. Gifty cut the performance one song short, and signaled for the group to silently leave. His family members softly muttered thank you’s.

    

“That was perfect,” Like whispered on the way out of the room. And it was. Every harmony was in sync, their voices blending perfectly together into one gentle and soothing sound. They come to their clients as strangers, but they form a deep connection through just their voices alone. And not only a connection with the clients—they formed connections with each other, too. Each of them radiated positive energy as they walked down the hallway.

    

Their second performance had a much different vibe. This client’s name was Robert, who looked about 60 years old—slightly older than Harry. He sat upright in his bed. Gifty began her speech again, introducing us as her friends from Miami University and explaining our goal to comfort him through song.

    

“That’s great because I’m going through a very painful process,” Robert said. His dentures made his speech slightly hard to understand and he had long pauses between sentences. He was much more alert and responsive than Harry, even talkative and friendly. Gifty spoke a little louder than she had with Harry, and the group seemed more relaxed in Robert’s room. The sun had started to go down, so his room slowly darkened.

    

They sang slightly louder this time, too. Gifty started with “My Grateful Heart” again. Robert kept his eyes open, looking from person to person. He made frequent eye contact with Josh.

    

“There’s no music like the human voice,” Robert told them.

    

I noticed how much higher Josh’s voice had become during this performance specifically. When Gifty signaled a higher harmony during “So Many Angels,” Josh’s voice blended in much more with the rest of the girls’ voices. He still stood out as the only male singer in the room, but his voice no longer had its deep, bassy inflection that caught my ear during their first rehearsal.

 

“What do you plan to do with music?” Robert asked Josh in the pause between songs. Everyone chuckled.

 

“Do it as long as I can,” Josh replied with a smile.

 

Robert told us that the year before he came to hospice, he listened to St. Olafs choir every day on his iPad. He told us all about his family. Robert’s son was a retired music teacher from Mason, Ohio, and his daughter taught at a school in Hamilton.  He said that our Miami educations would prepare us well for the real world, and wished the choir luck if they wanted to go into music careers.

    

The sun shone through the blinds in the darkening room right as they quietly got up to leave. Robert had briefly fallen asleep, but the sound of their stools folding woke him up. He thanked them profusely. Gifty asked Robert how the experience felt.

    

“The pain is almost gone,” he said.

    

“Did you hear that? He said, ‘The pain is almost gone,’” Like exclaimed in the hallway. Walking to the parking lot, they couldn’t stop raving about how natural and well-received both their performances went. Both clients appreciated the choir, and the feeling was mutual.

    

“The only emotion I can describe is gratitude,” Like said. “I’m so glad that this could bring so much joy and so much meaning. It’s so little effort, but the benefit is so great.”

 

She said the experience had been exactly how they described in training.

​

********************

    

A week later, Josh drove another group in his minivan to Hospice of Hamilton. One of the soprano singers, Robin, sat in the passenger seat. The two of them sang along to punk rock songs I had never heard of, perfectly harmonizing. I sat in the back with Katie, smiling and soaking in their voices.

    

When they got there, Robert had changed drastically.

    

More people came to this performance, so a few of them hadn’t experienced his previous demeanor.

    

Gifty knocked on his door and stepped inside. The rest of us waited in the hallway. I couldn’t make out their entire conversation, but he seemed confused and agitated. He asked for something, possibly medication. Gifty said a nurse would have to help him with that, and asked if they could sing to him.

    

“Whatever, I don’t care what you do,” he told her.

    

She came out into the hallway and shook her head. “He doesn’t want us to sing to him. He’s doped up on medication or something.”

She grabbed two nurses walking towards us.

    

“He needs help in there,” Gifty said.

    

“Oh, we know. We’re coming,” one of them said curtly.

    

They both put on plastic gloves before walking into his room, and shut the door behind them. They came out about a minute later.

TCMU had about ten minutes left of their session, so they contemplated whether to leave or sing to Robert. Gifty’s conversation with him seemed to deter her, but she made Josh go talk to him since they had bonded last week.

 

Josh marched in, cracking the door slightly behind him. I couldn’t hear what he said, but he popped his head into the hallway and signaled for us to come inside.

 

Even appearance-wise, Robert was not the same man from a week ago. His bed reclined slightly, and he looked small and helpless slumped toward the bottom of the bed. His room was still dimly lit. The choir formed their usual semi circle around the client. His speech was even harder to interpret this time; one of his dentures bordered on falling out of his mouth. He said something along the lines of, “I need my medication...and they won’t tell me when they’re going to give it to me...so sorry if I….” and then his voice trailed off as he mumbled something un-distinguishable. No one seemed to know how to respond, and the room stayed silent for a few moments.

 

Something finally clicked and Robert remembered them.

 

“Are you that group from Miami?” he asked weakly. They nodded, pleased. Gifty started her introduction speech. They had decided in the hallway to only sing one or two songs since he hadn’t seemed very interested. He seemed beyond their reach.

 

Gifty began singing, starting with one of her original songs. She explained to Robert that she wrote the song in a Ghanaian language, and encouraged him to close his eyes again.

 

“Sumo mi, sumo bo, sumo wofe,” they sang like naturals, pronouncing the words perfectly. This song could still be categorized as a lullaby, but it had a catchier and almost playful tone to it.

 

His slightly reclined angle made it hard for him to look as responsive and engaged as he had been last week. He kept his eyes closed most of the time instead of looking from person to person again.

 

When the singing stopped and Gifty paused, she stayed silent longer than usual. Robert muttered something, but no one understand what he said. They looked to each other for clarification. Gifty shook her head and shrugged.

 

“What’s the song about?” he repeated, louder and more coherently.

 

“Oh! It’s a song about loving you, loving me, and all of us loving one another,” Gifty said.

 

They sang one more song and then “took their leave” as Gifty always said.

 

“He was so different last week,” Josh said.

 

“Yeah, it’s so sad to see his progression,” Maria, a freshman member said.

 

Even the members who hadn’t been there last week felt attached. One of them quietly asked Gifty if the hospice center could notify us when their clients passed away. Gifty didn’t know.

 

On the ride back to Miami, Josh and Robin didn’t sing in the car.

 

I mulled the Robert situation over and over in my head. No one knew what Robert suffered from, but it amazed me how quickly it had consumed him in seven days. It made me think about my own grandparents, especially my own grandfather. What would it be like when he passed away? No one ever talks about death, and I had just come face to face with its precursor.

​

*******************

​

Walking into Hospice of Hamilton with the choir one final time, I felt an eerie sense of anxiety about Robert. I hadn’t thought much about it on the 25 minute car ride there, but it immediately hit me walking through the automatic doors of the building. Whatever he suffered from had sucked away snippets of his personality that we had gotten a small glimpse of, so I wondered how even more time had affected him.

The choir snapped me out of my worries for a moment while we centered ourselves in the kitchen area and waited for the nurses to give us a list of clients. I let my mind go blank, a skill I mastered throughout the semester during the choir’s rehearsals, and stared at the tile floor. They usually practiced a song before their real performances, but they didn’t this time. The members were chatty. They had stopped trying to persuade me to sing with them long ago, but that night they were back at it. I laughed it off.

​

I did think about joining in a few times just to take my mind off Robert. I had been with them all semester, and this would be my last chance to have the opportunity to sing with them. But, I knew I would mess up the words and harmony since I had never practiced with them before.

They sang for three clients with Gifty as the anchor before getting to Robert. One client was his next door neighbor, and I craned my neck to try to get glimpses of him from his cracked bedroom door just to make sure that he was still there in the first place.

 

When it was time to perform for Robert, Josh initiated contact again. He tapped on the door with his knuckles and went inside, cracking the door slightly behind him. He spoke so softly that I couldn’t hear anything he said from the hallway, but their conversation was brief. Josh waved us inside.

 

To my extreme surprise, the Robert from last week had vanished, and the original Robert that the group had fixated on so fondly took its place. It was naive to think that the choir’s singing had helped him recover—their performances were like putting a Band-Aid on his illness without having any power to actually stop its progression. But the thought gave me a sliver of hope for Robert. I’m sure he had good days and bad days, but I took it as a sign that our last experience with him ended on a good note.

​

Everyone seemed equally relieved and said hello walking in, breaking the rule that only the anchor can talk to clients.

 

Robert sat upright with a plate of food, a bowl of chili and a drink in a sippy cup for infants on a tray on his lap. He had a bib-like piece of fabric tucked into his hospital gown. His room had more lights on than usual. He smiled with his dentures as we filed in.

​

“Good to see you and your repertoire,” he said to Gifty.

​

They only sang three songs to him since they had performed for more clients than usual that night. Gifty closed her eyes while she sang, shaking her head back and forth to the beat of the songs.

​

Robert slowly continued eating his dinner during the performance. With shaky hands, he fed himself chili, leaving residue on his chin and bib. He took long breaks in between bites. Robert looked from person to person for extended periods of time, even me sitting behind the group, then looked up to the ceiling as if trying to remember something important. Someone noticed that he tapped his foot along to the songs. They sang loudly and confidently. Their body language seemed more relaxed.

​

Robert always talked between songs, but this time he stayed silent until the end.

​

“Thank you for sharing your talents. It makes the food go down easier.” The group laughed. “I hope the time we spent together was meaningful to you, too.”

​

“Your time has been very meaningful to us,” Gifty assured him.

​

“It gives me a rare experience of life to have music at this stage in life. I wish you well,” he said his last words to the group. The group beamed on the way out of his room. They would never see him again, but they made a minor dent in his life.

​

Back in the kitchen, they had one final reflection.

​

“It was very impactful to go back to Robert,” Josh said.

​

And it was. In total, we had probably interacted with him for about 30 minutes. But he made TCMU worth it. Singing to Robert gave them a real purpose. He affected me in ways I never expected. I never even sang to him—I just sat there and observed him. But I still felt involved in his life somehow. It made me wonder what would happen to him, and how much he would think of us.

​

Even in the car, Robert was a hot topic of conversation.

​

“Robert makes me happy,” Robin said.

​

Josh and Gifty drove the group back to Miami from Hospice of Hamilton for the last time.