Whole Life Times: Singing Over the Bones

August 2005 | Points of Contact

Singing Over the Bones

A Spontaneous Musical Connection Brings Two Souls Together

by Marcia Singer

I’d arrived early to make my rounds in the nursing home. The activities director had given me a list of residents she thought would particularly benefit from my musical healing songs, and next on my list was Lillian.

Lillian was in room 312 in bed C in the subacute ward. Her bed was by the window, and in the dim light leaking through the closed curtains I could see that she was dying. A veritable bag of bones, she sat bent over in her wheel chair beside the bed. A nasty looking mess of freshly vomited food lay in a puddle on the bedding beside her lunch tray. I quickly looked away and back to the sick old woman before me.

"Would you like me to sing a special song for you?” I inquired softly. She nodded a wisp of approval, eyes cast down, hopelessly attached to a face and neck unable to rise to the occasion.

"I’ll be loving you, always"... I began, crooning gently, strumming my guitar, “with a love that’s true, always."

Lillian clucked an approval, mouthing the word “always” each time we came around to it.

"Days may not be fair, always... but that’s when I’ll be there, always…” I swayed rhythmically back and forth as I sang to Lillian, doing my best to bathe her in soothing sounds, giving her a “sound bath.”

Standing quite close beside her chair, I towered above her as I sang. Bending down, I caught her eyes for the final refrain: “Not for just an hour, not for just a day, not for just a year—but always."

We stared curiously at one another, eyeball to eyeball. Lillian’s were huge, rather vacant, dark with secret stories she had no way of sharing and ghastly against the severe hollows of her cheeks.

I started another song, one that just popped up from somewhere inside of me.

"Let me call you Sweetheart,” I sang hopefully, searching for Lillian inside those haunting eyes, “I’m in love with you..."

I adjusted my gaze so that I could take in her whole face. Thick white hairs launched recklessly out of her chin, and tufts of gray broke out all over the top of her head. This was a woman whom aging had hit hard and left rough and ragged.

Fascinated, I sang on: “Let me hear you whisper that you love me, too."

Lillian craned her head, turning her bulging eyes and seeming to find me there, crouched before her with my guitar on my knees, singing this love song to her, to us, both of us.

"Keep the love light burning, in your eyes so blue..."

Shivers ran along my spine, as always happens when I am taking in something bigger than myself. Here I was, singing a love song to an archetypal hag. But “hag” comes from the Greek word for “sacred grove,” for “holy."

"Let me call you Sweetheart...” I shivered again, as I understood somewhere deep inside of me, in a place only the music knew, that with Lillian’s silent help, I was singing for myself as well. We both had become crone: ancient song, timeless text. In one breath the scorned and forgotten one arose between us, and in the next, the wise woman. What a strange and wondrous duet, this song of honoring, of remembering, of singing over the bones, re-fleshing each of us back to life even as she, singing from within me, also sat before me in the guise of Lillian, wasting away, dying.

My song continued to come and I could do nothing but serve its purpose until, mysteriously as it had begun, it ended, finishing my time with Lillian: “I’m in love with you...” My voice trailed off into silence.

I patted Lillian’s hand, thanked her and left to continue my visits. “I’ll be back in two weeks,” I told her, not knowing if she understood or even heard me, yet certain our souls had touched.

Two Mondays later, I returned to make my rounds. Reporting in to the activity director, as always, I asked if there were any particular instructions for that day. She told me that Lillian had died a few days before. We observed a moment of silence; words were too cumbersome and awkward to attempt.

Lillian’s astonishing, frightful, beautiful face, her high, frail cheekbones and those enormous eyes are forever impressed upon me. Through them I was able to witness the visage of the crone, to see my own ancient face. We sang of life and we sang of death and knew that love was all we had. And all we needed.

"Let me call you Sweetheart, I’m in love with you."

Marcia Singer, MSW, CHT, author of Iron Jane: Tales of Awakening a Wild Heart, is a shamanic hands-on healing artist and medical empath who directs the Foundation For Intimacy in LA. Contact her at 877.ART.WILD or 818.623.6434.

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