From the Brattleboro Area Hospice 2015 Annual Report When Hallowell sings in a room where someone is dying, grief is likely to show up. We have described our singing as “a place for grief to rest.” But what do we mean by these words? What does it mean to “give grief a place to rest?” Grief is …
From the Brattleboro Area Hospice 2014 Annual Report When I visit my mom, now in her 80’s, and it’s time to say good-bye after a short visit that felt too long, bags all packed, bedding washed and put away, we say our ritual good-byes. We hug and kiss and say our thank you for this …
Hallowell’s Ten Year Anniversary (2013) A decade after we gathered around Dinah’s bed in the Breunig’s cozy Putney house and sang for her during the last days of her life, a decade after Noree Ennis; the then-patient care coordinator asked if we might sing this way for others, a decade after we said Yes with …
Some Hallowell Stories (2012) She crossed the street to reach me on the sidewalk in Brattleboro one spring day. Winter had receded. Brattleboro was humming with life the way it does on a day like this. She looked familiar but I couldn’t place her at first. Not until she introduced herself as Erica and reminded …
From the Brattleboro Area Hospice 2011 Annual Report On the first Thursday of each month, throughout Brattleboro and the surrounding areas, you are likely to see small groups of Hallowell singers meeting, gathering and preparing to go out to visit hospice clients and their families in their homes or hospital rooms or nursing home rooms. …
From an update which appeared in the 2009 Brattleboro Area Hospice Annual Report After six years, Hallowell continues to serve the community by offering bedside sings for the dying. We consider these sings to be the heart or core of what has become known to us as our “practice.” Every time we are …
Brattleboro Area Hospice Annual Report 2007 We always start with the same song. “How Could Anyone Ever Tell You, you are anything less than beautiful, how could anyone ever tell you, you are less than whole?How could anyone fail to notice that your loving is a miracle, how deeply you’re connected to my soul.” We …
September, 2006 When we welcome life’s passages, birth and death, into our daily lives, when we are not so distant and removed from these powerful times of transition between worlds, we become more comfortable around them and then of course, more amazed and graced by our living. I believe it is this grace that accounts …
