My End-of-Life Checklist: Will? Check. Health care proxy? Check. My 5 Wishes completed and reviewed with family? Check. My playlist for dying? In Process.
You all know people who have chosen music to be played at their funeral. But, before that time arrives, many of us will still be able to listen to music but will not be able to choose it for ourselves. Hence a Deathbed Playlist.
It’s hard to imagine an experience suited for music better than at the end of life — a time when music’s unique expressive qualities are precious. A person’s favorite-recorded music can be part of a “life review.” For music lovers, such “life soundtracks” aren’t a distraction from the experience of dying but rather a means of deepening it.
I started my Deathbed Playlist a decade ago and have encouraged family members, friends and patients to do the same. By doing this we have given our loved ones the gift of music they treasured during their closing hours. And, as we listen together, it was also a gift for us.
In many traditions, music is divine. Thomas Carlyle called it the “speech of angels.” In the 11th century, Benedictine monks developed an elaborate ritual for the dying, accompanied by Gregorian chants. The music could last as long as the dying did, easily a week or longer. The15th-century composer, Guillaume Dufay, carefully composed his own deathbed music. Paul Simon said, “Music should continue, right on up until you die.”
Today live music is a part of the movement to reintegrate death back into American culture. In 2014, NPR listeners heard from the Threshold Choir, founded by Kate Munger. Its members sing in homes, hospices and hospitals in 150 communities worldwide. Ms. Munger stresses the enormous differences between recorded music, and the deep human connection of live music.
Laura Thomae, a hospice-based music therapist in Philadelphia has sung for the dying for 12 years. She told me. “Only live music can be adapted to mirror, match and change with the varying rhythms of the dying process.”
It is a real possibility that at some point we’ll be unable to express our musical preferences. Even those who are closest to us wouldn’t know all the music we love and the small, distant memories embodied by it.
My husband’s favorite deathbed tune is John Lennon’s classic, Imagine and Joni Mitchell’s “Amelia” – a song about travel, flying and love.
My playlist so far — don’t laugh — music from Neil Diamond (my very first album), rock and roll from Green Day, Buddhist chants and YoYo Ma among many others. You can see my growing and ever-changing Deathbed Playlist under Resources.
I encourage you to create your own Deathbed Playlist and help others around you to do the same. You know the kind — music that makes us happy to be alive.
Mary Ann – This is an Excellent idea!
Thank you for helping us prepare for the final goodbye.
JoAnne
You are most welcome JoAnne.
What would be on your Playlist?
I just reviewed the Threshold Choir link. Amazing.
I live in a rural area and our Hospice is very small – census is @ 20.
We have made it a practice to hum simple songs to our patients while caring for them. Sometimes our patients hum along. I will start to incorporate singing out loud. I think it will add a beautiful addition.
Thank you for sharing these tidbits.
P.S. I will start making my Playlist. I have the songs for my memorial but I didn’t even think about what I would want to share with family and friends during my final days.
My all time favorite would be anything Judy Collins…My Life. Love the insight
Hmmm, what if I make a death track today, put it away, and then when I’m on my deathbed, I wish to change tracks…bummer. Put my deathbed in nature please, with friends laughing and playing.
Some colleagues suggestions:
Maria Goldberg wants it loud:
Anything by Zeppelin and don’t forget to crank up the volume!
João Cruz says two songs are enough.
Start with the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, because ever since “The Big Chill” it seems to me the perfect “so long” tune. The song evokes the movie, which evokes friendship, affection and love and rock ’n’ roll and all the good, small, big, important things that were worth it, like the people around us. Go on to “St. Matthew Passion,” good old Johann Sebastian Bach. It’s the most sublime piece of music ever written and it’s the closest thing to eternity and the divine in music that I know of.
DW says Grateful Dead all the way:
If there’s a heaven, it’ll basically be an endless Grateful Dead concert.
Dan Kravitz plans to die in the woods, and part of him wants the “quiet, not soundless, purity of the forest in winter.” But if he chose a playlist:
Bach (Brandenburgs and Italian Concerto). The last movement of the Italian Concerto is the sound of a waterfall in a hurricane. I’ll take it at the end.
The Band (“Acadian Driftwood” and others). “Set my compass north, I got winter in my blood.” My life has been a migration from Brooklyn to Maine.
Dylan (“Like a Rolling Stone,” “Tangled Up in Blue”). Anthemic and complicated. I see resemblances to my life.
Louis Armstrong (“What a Wonderful World”). Yes, thank you.
Mark also would tip to nature:
“Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Because I want to be reminded of the splendor of this beautiful and terrible life, and the grandeur of nature. That’ll do for me on the way out.
Debra wants to hear oldies:
The music I’ll play on my deathbed will be Beatles songs as they’ve made me the most happiest in life. On a related note, Paul McCartney has a magnificent song about death on his 2007 “Memory Almost Full” album, titled “The End of the End.”
Motown songs and a ton of one-hit wonders over the last 50-plus years will have their place on my playlist. The songs that make me happy and perhaps take me to a better place are the ones I want to hear at my “end.”
Muddlerminnow good naturedly reminds us not everyone can have a playlist.
I’m jealous — what’s a deaf guy like me supposed to do?
Bettina Blanco was one of several who would request David Bowie. She singles out one of his signature songs, “Space Oddity.”
Greg Gathright wants joyful gospel:
John Rutter’s arrangement of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” We will sing this today in worship, with Dixieland band and joyful hearts.
Taylor Smith says to make it garage rock:
The Statics’ “An Un-respected Man” followed by the Pleasure Seekers’ classic party banger “What a Way to Die.”
John Brooks’s selection is aptly titled:
“The End” by the Doors.