linda macdonald

In Tune

Hymn sing at the nursing home starts at 10:45 a.m. sharp. I hardly ever go to church anymore but when I do, I love to sing the hymns. Love to sing without worrying about being sharp or flat since there’s always someone else who’s singing louder and more off-key.

Most Sundays, Alan, a silver-haired senior, volunteers his time to play the guitar, strumming the tunes of God in a sort of music-only church service. It’s been almost three years since my father-in-law moved into the home and our customary visits on Sunday morning often begin with Alan. For thirty minutes, he leads the audience through songs from my past, like “Jesus Loves Me,” but with a country twang. In wheelchairs and with walkers, the crooners and the hummers know it by heart. I do too.

Hymn sing gives my middle-aged self a thirty-minute respite from the never-ending thoughts and never-to-be-answered questions about ageing and illness, life and death. Loss and grief, acceptance and joy.

Alan’s in tune with the audience and at ease with the revolving door. He accepts that for each new patient welcomed into hymn sing, another one has passed away.

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In early 2017, on the way to hospice, we picked up a dozen white roses. Mom loved white, white anything: flowers, linen, T-shirts, Cool-Whip. Fresh. Clean. Unsullied. The roses blossomed on the windowsill, and each day more petals unfurled, primping and posing for Mom.

It was a harrowing ten days after the diagnosis, a vigil lasting two hundred and forty hours, her husband of fifty-eight years and four children hovering at her bedside. The six of us cocooned in the twelve-foot by eight-foot hospice room, the dark hardwood floor strewn with winter-coat mattresses and rolled-up sweater pillows, a nest I could hardly bear to leave for even an hour or two.

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Growing up, Sunday mornings at church were a family affair, followed by a late lunch of roast beef and crispy-coated roasted potatoes served on fancy china. My siblings and I unfolded the thick, white cotton serviettes, placed them on our laps and waited for Dad to pray. Or God forbid, ask one of us to. The words never changed: “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.”

In our teen years, my siblings and I started to wiggle out of Sunday church. “I’m too tired” or, “I have too much homework.”

Mom and Dad often returned from the service and said, with a twinkle in their eyes, “We said a prayer for you.”

I’d chuckle and say, “Thanks, I hope it works.”

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On the Sundays when Alan can’t play at hymn sing, a staff member puts on one of the interactive DVDs of choral music that caters to residents of a long-term care facility. A woman with a pencil neck sings with her mouth wide, enunciating each syllable of each word in underwater slow motion, and a male choir from Wales is conducted by an accomplished soprano who upstages the singers with her operatic solo of “Panis Angelicus.”

Yet the fallback videos fail to ignite the audience the same way Alan does. Without his easy-going, infectious charm, their voices fade. And my husband, spectacularly tone-deaf by his own account, goes silent. The musical discord rattles my mind and I close my eyes. Where will I go when I die? Who will I see? My faith is the wavering on-and-off kind. I believe in a higher power who is, more often than not, God. Yet I ache to feel certainty without the proof. If I can’t, then I doubt I’m worthy of a ticket into Heaven.

I hope I die before my husband and children to avoid the suffering altogether, but then I’d be imposing the grief on them while I get off scot-free. How selfish is that? Will death be quick and painless? Or will I die in a nursing home? If I do, what songs will the volunteer play? “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”? “Onward Christian Soldiers”? My children don’t know those hymns, but maybe it won’t matter. Maybe there won’t be a volunteer like Alan to play God’s tunes with a country twang.

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At the hospice, the nurses exuded calm, the cadence of their steps as gentle as their voices. Like Alan, they were at ease with the revolving door.  

One of the nurses explained, “It’s more than likely that one of you or all of you will miss your mother’s last breath. She may slip away while you’re asleep on the floor or taking a bathroom break. If that happens, please don’t feel as though you’ve let her down. She will have felt your presence every moment until her last breath.”

And maybe even after? I wondered. Will she still be with us after she passes, watching over us, witnessing our grief?

I couldn’t fathom her disappearing altogether. In body. In spirit.

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I’m fifty-seven years old and still don’t know how to pray. On the occasional Sunday that I do go to church and the minister says, “Bow your head. Let us pray,” I lower my chin and pretend to listen. With my eyes at half-mast, I look right, then left, wondering if anyone is actually absorbed in the minister’s prayer. Perhaps they’re just resting their eyelids. Or thinking about the work week ahead. Or deciding what to have for lunch after the service.

My discomfort intensifies when the minister says, “Take a minute of silence.” The stillness and quiet of the congregation is palpable. My neck muscles tighten, my eyelids flutter. I stare down at the hymnbook in my lap and flip quietly through the delicate pages until I’ve found the next scheduled hymn. I count down the seconds and wait, anxious for the thunder of the pipe organ, its rumblings beckoning us to stand up and sing.

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At the hospice, the nurse explained that without sustenance, Mom’s organs would slowly shut down. “It’s my job,” she said, “to make sure your mom is as comfortable as she possibly can be.” She lifted the blanket and placed a hand on each foot. “They’re still warm to the touch. There’s time…she’s not ready to go.”

The five of us, desperate to capture every minute of present life, rotated around the clock. For two hundred and forty hours we were not empty fridges and messy houses and shovelling the snow; we were soothing hands and tender kisses and loving so hard our hearts could explode. We were not healthy greens and chicken breasts and loading the dishwasher; we were vanilla lattes and cookies and scones and popping Advil and Tums until the pain quieted.

For ten days we were fledglings in the nest. On the morning Mom passed, the nurse peeked in and saw a change in her breathing pattern. “She doesn’t have long. Just a few minutes left.”

Her soul slipped out of the vessel that had housed her for seventy-nine years and boarded the next flight to Heaven.

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Long before her death, Mom had selected the hymns she wanted to shepherd her into Heaven. At her memorial service I stood tall and belted out “Praise My Soul the King of Heaven” and “All Things Bright and Beautiful”––a salute to Mom for all those times she’d whispered in my ear, “You have such a beautiful voice dear.” But it was the hymns. I’m sure of it. So many of them were written in my best key.

Nobody else has ever told me that I have a beautiful voice. In fact, at the age of thirteen, I was kicked out of the choir, the music teacher insisting, “You sing flat.” I save my voice for church hymns, Christmas carols, and the occasional radio blast-from-the-past while driving solo in the car.

As the memorial service came to a close, the minister stood at the lectern and said to the guests, “Let us pray.”

I bowed my head and closed my eyes. For that one minute, I wasn’t distracted or curious or questioning my faith; I was present and thoughtful and grateful to have loved.

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When it’s my time to surrender, I hope Mom and I will be reunited, that the gatekeepers will let me into that place of peaceful serenity that she inhabits. For now, though, I will follow Alan’s lead. For thirty minutes on Sunday morning, I am not hardcover hymnals and pipe organ splendour; I am spiral-bound booklets and strings on guitar. I am not stiff wooden church pews and perfect pitch choirs; I am stackable chairs and a chaos of keys.

My faithfulness is rooted in love.

Hymn sing at the nursing home has become my weekly prayer.