Within the last year and a half Alzheimer’s disease has taken hold of Norma Houghton and led to a swift decline.
The once lively woman who delivered babies at a hospital in the Monadnock region for more than three decades has lost many memories, and much of her speech. Her husband Owen said that while she is very cordial, she doesn’t recognize him. She’ll say things like “you’re very good to me,” and sometimes he thinks, if only for a moment, that she remembers who he is and what they had. But, he said, it’s just a common phrase she uses to address the staff members at Summerhill Assisted Living, where she now resides.
Owen said one thing Norma does remember is music, and she still enjoys singing.
“The language skills have all but disappeared,” Owen said. “But singing is another side of the brain and she still remembers the oldies and goodies.”
Norma sang in a church choir for decades, but with limited ability to come-and-go these days, a small group now comes to sing by her bedside. The group is part of a hospice and palliative choir called TraverSing.
“I’ve walked in when there are two or three singers who are signing softly and gently,” Owen said. “It’s just a beautiful ambiance.”
Marybeth Hallinan — a local director, vocalist, pianist/organist — incepted TraverSing about five years ago after her own mother passed away.
While her mother was dying, she and her two daughters would sing around her bedside.
“It made me realize that there’s power there,” Hallinan said. “There’s beautiful power there and it was a way to transcend the hopelessness of the situation for us, and also a way to offer our love for her where words were no longer of any use. There was nothing else to say.”
Hallinan has operated a signing studio for more than 25 years in southwestern New Hampshire. She founded and directs Two Rivers Community Choir, the Choral Union at Franklin Pierce University, and has accompanied for several youth choirs in the area including at ConVal High School.
Already with a full schedule, Hallinan said, she knew she wanted to start a hospice and palliative care choir.
“I thought, ‘this is what I need to be doing with my singing,’” Hallinan said. “This is almost as much as a calling as bringing people to their own voice.”
Hallinan said once she started researching the topic online, she found that there is a burgeoning movement of similar groups across the country.
Carol Simpson, who is a member of TraverSing, said she was interested in joining after she witnessed the death of her best friend, her mom, and her dad in a short period of time.
“I had a sense of frustration that I couldn’t share the experience more with them,” Simpson said after a recent rehearsal. ” … At some point there’s no way to talk to them because they’re drugged or they’re in pain or they’re otherwise out of it. So I think this (singing) is a way, for me anyway, that you can share in it.”
Group members all have different reasons why they sing in the choir. Some say they sing to help ease the pain of a person who is moving from life to death, others say they do it for the families who are losing a loved one, and many agree that singing also acts as a self-therapy session for themselves.
Gail MacInnes, of Francestown, said some of the members of the TraverSing choir came to her mother-in-law’s memorial service last fall. She said Barbara passed away quickly after she was diagnosed with vasculitis. Barbara’s death came as a shock to the family because, just a few months prior, she had been out playing golf and competitive ping pong. The suddenness of the death left the family scrambling to put together a funeral service.
MacInnes said they didn’t have much time, but the pieces, somehow, fell together. She said Hallinan, who is an old friend, offered to bring members of the choir to the service.
“[TraverSing] sang a couple of songs,” MacInnes said. “They were just beautiful, everyone had a wonderful voice.”
She said Barbara was a big fan of music and knew she would have enjoyed the service.
As for Owen, he said, Norma has been withdrawing from activities lately. She used to look forward to playing bingo, but she’s recently become disinterested.
He said singing is one of the few things she still enjoys doing as the disease progresses. Owen said her face still lights up when she hears music, and every so often she’ll recognize a hymn and chime in, which offers a small window into her life prior to the diagnosis.