The Spiritual Fulfillment of Music

Meet music therapist Deborah Gromack, director of Homestead program at Goddard House, who believes music provides a new doorway to healing and emotional balance for people suffering from a range of maladies.

The Spiritual Fulfillment of Music Mary Lynn: Gromack has been working with Alzheimer patients for 10 years. As she became more deeply involved in her work she began to realize how vital music was to meeting the spiritual needs of her patients. Gromack: And I played for people who are so progressed in their disease process with Alzheimer’s. They’re no longer able to eat or drink and so they’re dying as a result of that. In the end stages that’s what happens. So even when somebody is dying and I’m at their bedside they’re still expressing a desire to connect, to be close to God. Jesus, God whoever, how ever they conceptualize that whether it’s through the singing of sacred song, prayer, even if the person isn’t able to speak or express that fully there’s a palpable sense of peace that the person gets calming. Mary Lynn: She has experienced too many emotional moments with patients who are dying but Gromack recalled one patient in particular who had a profound effect on her. Gromack: She could still write. She had emphysema. She was no longer able to speak, was on a ventilator and she gestured to me and we communicated in that way and she was still able to write earlier on before she was dying and actively dying and she wrote the lyrics down to Amazing Grace and I was saying to her when I would come to visit her she would look at them and she would hold on to this piece of paper and when she was dying she still had the lyrics to Amazing Grace when I was singing to her and I think that’s one of the events in my life that impacted my desire to look at the spiritual piece more closely. Mary Lynn: Gromack’s experiences working with dying patients is deeply moving and inspiring to her because she’s able to ease their final days and hours with joy and happy memories. Gromack: I was playing for client who is dying maybe about three or four years ago and one of her favorite songs happen to be a song that I chose to play. I didn’t know that at that time but she died while I was playing this particular song for her and afterward I express this to her son and he said you know my mom used to dance to that song with my dad and that was one of their favorite songs. Mary Lynn: Gromack says that sometimes intuition helps the music therapist to choose the appropriate musical remedy for a patient. Gromack: And I’m so glad it was one of the last things that she heard when she passed. So there are moments of serendipity or synchronicity but there are universal themes too when somebody is dying, comfort, not to be alone, the feeling that there is something they’re going toward, gratitude, there all sorts of feelings that come out.