A hospital wedding with 'good vibrations'

Harpist Nancy Kleiman has performed at numerous weddings, her hands gliding over the strings to evoke soothing, uplifting, and ethereal notes.

This past Valentine's Day, she accompanied yet another wedding, but this one took place in the hospital -- and the bride was dying of cancer.

"Her simple gown was a 'Johnny,' Nancy wrote. "Her lips were covered with a mask to help her breathe, and her 'veil' was the small cotton cap that covered her lockless crown."

Nancy strummed at the woman's bedside at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston as the couple took their vows, supported by a handful of caregivers and family members. The patient held a bouquet of yellow tulips and beamed as the chaplain read from the Song of Songs, "Arise my beloved." There was a small wedding cake with a traditional bride-groom figurine at the top.

The ceremony was one of the most poignant moments Nancy has experienced as she takes her harp -- which she calls an "instrument of compassion" -- around two Boston hospitals (Brigham and Women's and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) and a local hospice. Her goal is to ease anxiety, sadness, and grief, as well as lift spirits during stressful times.

Whether she is playing Celtic, Irish, American folk, or spiritual selections such as "Amazing Grace," Nancy's music gives people permission to cry, exchange feelings, and loosen emotional knots, she told me during a recent interview. It can even inspire goodbye conversations that might not otherwise happen. "I create sacred space," says Nancy, pointing out that harps are mentioned more than 50 times in the Bible and are, of course, associated with angels and heaven.

She doesn't have an assigned spot but goes where she is needed, whether to patient rooms or common areas. While riding in a crowded hospital elevator one day, a woman turned to her and said, "Do you ever play for patients? My mother is dying." "I'm right behind you," is Nancy's typical reply.

Music has been tapped for its healing powers since ancient times, and its role is growing in hospice and palliative care programs, according to the Growth House site. There are even formal programs in music thanatology, which involves using live music at the bedside of dying patients.

Nancy, however, is self-taught, inspired to take up the stringed instrument after attending a harp-filled funeral several years ago. A former nun who converted to Judaism, she sees herself not as a music therapist but as a compassionate human being who "circulates good vibrations" and who translates love -- whether at a birth, death, or other major life event -- into healing melodies.

So when her cell phone rang on Valentine's Day, and a hospital chaplain asked her to play during the patient's wedding, she headed straight to the room. "I knew I would be receiving a gift far greater than I could ever give -- a gift of witnessing the power of love to transcend death," she wrote in an essay about the event.

The bride passed away about a month after they were married, Nancy said. "I played the harp at her wake."
      
Consider this . . .      
Music can help during times of sadness, stress, and grief.

Music can also inspire conversations at the end of life.

What matters most is the love in the room.