Music as a Portal in Grief
I’ve been listening recently to Breathing Wind, an honest and insightful podcast about grief and loss. Among my favorite episodes is a conversation between Oceana Sawyer and Melaine DeMore entitled “Beyond the Ears: Music for the End of Life.”
It’s a breathtakingly beautiful conversation about Melanie’s work as a threshold singer – someone who sings at the bedside of people who are at the threshold between life and death.
One of the many challenges of dying, grief, and loss is that it takes us into a place beyond language. Words become inadequate to describe our experience. Music, I find, often becomes a portal to that place that words cannot reach.
I remember so many times in my own grief experience when music has been a portal, a comfort, and a method of communication during difficult times.
Music was one of the love languages between me and my sister Melissa. When she was first diagnosed with brain cancer, I made a playlist for her. I’ll never forget the moment we were driving to a radiation appointment together, listening to it together for the first time. The opening song, Rachel Platten’s “Stand By You,” repeats the lyrics: “Even if we can’t find heaven, I’ll walk through hell with you.” It said the thing I could not say. We drove to the appointment in tears.
As my sister lay dying several years later, music once again became a refuge and a place of connection. Her husband softly played guitar by her bedside. Me and a childhood friend played her songs that we all loved in high school. Recordings of Melissa and her husband singing together played next to her ear. They all become methods of comfort, for her and for us, and reminders of the beautiful life that she lived.
And now, I find, music provides a portal into my pain. Sometimes I can feel my grief hovering on the surface, and then I’ll hear a song that taps right into my sadness. I have several “Seester” playlists - either playlists that she made for me, or songs that remind me of her - and I’ll put them on when I know it’s time to lean in and have a good cry. When it feels like too much to access the pain on my own, music becomes a portal into my grief.
And music, of course, can also help us stay connected with the past and with those that we’ve lost. Our senses are such an incredible portal for accessing our memories and for feeling the presence of those we love.
How has music been a tool or support to you in your experience with grief and loss? Reach out tell me here. I would love to hear.
