Outside the window of Vernon Linth’s
room at the Washington Soldiers Home & Colony in Orting, a
gentle rain is falling on manicured grounds dotted with bright
pink rhododendron blossoms.
Inside on this gray Thursday in June,
Linth sits in a red-frame wheelchair. On his head is a cap with
the words USS Finback SS 230 printed on the front. Framed medals
earned during World War II and the Korean War hang on the wall. He
served aboard U.S. Navy submarines, including the Finback.
Beside him sits Bonnie Steinkamp, playing
a harp.
In his late 80s and frail, Linth is one
of four hospice patients in the 97-bed nursing care unit of the
Soldiers Home. Patients are admitted to hospice when doctors
believe they have no more than six months to live and the last
viable option is palliative care – a type of care that serves to
ease pain and improve the quality of life for patients, usually
the terminally ill. Linth has beaten the odds. He has been in
hospice care since last June.
Steinkamp, a certified healing musican,
softly plays "Danny Boy," "Jesus Loves, Me,"
"Amazing Grace" and Simon and Garfunkel’s
"Scarborough Fair." She also plays "The Old Rugged
Cross," a special favorite of Linth’s.
He has great difficulty speaking, and he
seems agitated when she sits down beside him. That could be due to
the fact that on this morning there are strangers in the room.
But as Steinkamp plays, Linth calms.
"Now he’s in his zone with
her," says Ileen Gallagher, the nursing unit’s therapeutic
recreation specialist, who is in the room watching.
"When he saw her, you could see the
light in his eyes just brighten," Gallagher says.
PERSONALLY INSPIRED
Steinkamp’s first experience playing
for a terminally ill person was a personal one.
In 2003, one of her friends was in
intensive care at a hospital in Seattle, dying from cancer.
Members of her family were at her bedside. Steinkamp knew the
woman through her church, and, in her sorrow, wanted to do
something, anything, to ease her friend’s suffering.
"I wanted to help," she says.
"But what can you do to help in that situation?" And
then it came to her: "I thought, ‘I’m going to play for
her.’"
A soft-spoken resident of South King
County, Steinkamp has been playing the harp for 14 years. Her
daughters, ages20 and 17, also are trained in the instrument. Her
husband, a skilled craftsman, has made some of the 12 harps she
owns.
A one-time computer programmer, Steinkamp
now teaches the harp to elementary and middle school students in
the Auburn School District. She also leads a local harp ensemble.
In seeking to play for her friend,
Steinkamp got permission from the hospital staff and the family.
She brought her harp into the room and began to play. "They
hadn’t slept in a couple of days and it was pretty tense,"
she recalls. But as she played, "the whole room
relaxed."
"I ended up playing her favorite
song, just by accident," she says. It was the hymn,
"Lamb of God."
The woman had been semiconscious,
Steinkamp says, but when she heard that song she awoke. She began
to speak. "She wanted everybody to sing with me,"
Steinkamp says. And they did.
Steinkamp left not long afterward.
Her friend died that night.
TRAINING TO HEAL
Playing at the Seattle hospital marked a
turning point for Steinkamp: "It was such a beautiful
experience for me that I wanted to get trained in it," she
says. And she did.
She trained at the International Healing
Musician’s Program, which offers instruction by phone and the
Internet. A number of similar programs are available in the United
States. One, the Music for Healing and Transition Program is
taught at St. Francis Hospital in Federal Way. Its graduates are
called music practitioners. Training can take up to a year.
Steinkamp is one of an estimated 30 to 35
musicians offering this type of service in Pierce County and South
King County, says Carole Glenn, the program’s state coordinator
and the instructor for the course at St. Francis Hospital.
The programs have become increasingly
popular in recent years thanks to word-of-mouth praise from family
members of hospice patients, says Hilda Harmon, comfort therapy
manager for Franciscan Health System in Tacoma.
"Every hospice (program) is offering
it now," Harmon says, adding that Franciscan was the first
hospice program in the Northwest to offer the service 12 years
ago.
Insurance does not cover the services the
musicians provide. Their work is supported by donations and
fundraisers.
Most musicians work under contract with
medical centers. Steinkamp is a contractor with Good Samaritan
Hospital in Puyallup. She also works for the hospice program at
Highline Medical Center in Burien.
Hospice program staff members determine
where and for whom the musicians play. Steinkamp says she’s sent
wherever those people are: hospitals, nursing facilities, such as
the Soldiers Home and private residences.
‘FROM THE HARP TO THE HEART’
Musicians play instruments other than the
harp. Some play guitar, others the flute, keyboard, bassoon or
cello. And some musicians also sing, like Glenn. She’s a
guitarist and also a harpist, which she says is a special
instrument.
"There is something absolutely
enchanting and hard to define about the harp," says Glenn.
That something has to do with the length
of the instrument’s longest strings. They set up a deep resonant
vibration that listeners don’t just hear but physically feel.
"It vibrates within the body within a large range," she
says, adding, there’s "something that goes from the harp to
the heart."
"It has an otherworldly kind of a
sound," Steinkamp says.
The appearance of the harp itself
reinforces the otherworldly aspect of the music. "We
associate it with angels," says Donna Poppe, a music
education professor at Pacific Lutheran University who specializes
in musical therapy.
The music harpists play in hospice
settings is very calming. "Listeners are helped into the
presence of serenity," Poppe says.
That is by design.
When musicians first enter a room, they
are trained to study the mood and physical state of the patient.
"I use all my senses,"
Steinkamp says. "I’m watching their breathing rate,
watching their facial expressions.
"When you come into a situation and
somebody is sad, you don’t go play happy music. That would be
irritating,"
Steinkamp says. Slow, meditative music is
called for in such a case.
"The music becomes part of the
person I’m playing for," Steinkamp says. "I’m so in
tune with what’s going on with them that I can play the exact
same song two times in a row for two different people, and it will
sound like a totally different song."
She brings sheet music with her but
sometimes she’ll improvise a melody if that’s what the
situation seems to call for. "If they’re having irregular
breathing you might play irregularly to match their breathing. And
then you move to a more regular beat, hoping they follow you
along," Steinkamp says.
"It is very intuitive," Glenn
says. "It’s being able to communicate with a patient in the
moment and to determine what music would be most helpful for the
patient at that time."
GUIDED FROM ABOVE
In the four years Steinkamp has been
working the hospice field, she has played for hundreds of
patients. The number varies from week to week. Sometimes, if she’s
working at a hospital, she can play for anywhere between five to
10 people in a two-hour period.
She acknowledges she often has to steel
herself before she walks into a patient’s room. That’s
particularly true when she has to go through many doors in a
single day.
"I don’t know if you ever get used
to it," she says. "I do try to pray before I go in so
that I can do what needs to be done for that person."
The goal is not only to soothe the
patient but also to help comfort the family as well. Family
members are often moved to tears when she plays, Steinkamp says.
Sometimes she cries herself. "It’s for the grief of the
family. That’s the hard thing to see."
Of all the patients Steinkamp has played
for, only a few have died while she’s been in the room.
"The first time this happened there was just extreme
grief," she says. "So I played some very sad songs at
that point as they were dealing with that, and then I gradually
played more soothing music." And the sobbing stopped as
members of the dead woman’s family began to recall happy moments
from her life.
"Every time I go play for somebody I
get something back from it," she says. "It is an honor
to be there, especially when you’re in the very last days of
somebody’s life and the family is allowing you to come in and be
part of that very intimate journey."
Steinkamp says she feels as though she’s
been divinely guided. There have been many occasions where she’ll
be playing a song for a patient, a total stranger, and be told by
a family member that it was their loved one’s favorite.
Steinkamp does not believe her choices in those instances were a
matter of coincidence.
"I just feel like God has placed me
in this path," she says. "Whether I knew whether I
wanted to do it or not, he knew I would enjoy it. I’m there to
do whatever he wants me to do."
A DIVINE FEELING
Back at the Soldiers Home, Steinkamp
finishes a song and pages through her sheet music for the next
one. Gallagher steps forward and asks Linth what he feels when he
hears the harp. With great difficulty and in a voice so soft one
has to strain to hear it, he whispers: "Holy."
And then again:
"Holy."
Steinkamp resumes her playing.
After about an hour, the session ends.
Steinkamp closes her music folder, stands and prepares to leave.
She leans close to say goodbye. Linth looks directly at her, and
with great effort, he whispers:
"Thank you."
