Local volunteer group sings to people ‘at the thresholds of life’

ATHENS, Ohio — When Athens resident Bonnie Edwards’ mother was dying, she sang to her.

“My mother was a singer. We sang together a lot, and she was always really supportive of me as a singer,” Edwards said. “It was just a really wonderful way to connect with her – even in the last week of her life, when she wasn’t actually able to be present with me, I knew that she could hear. And I just sang – a lot.”

Edwards drew upon songs she’d learned years prior through Threshold Choir, a national organization that helps prepare singers to sing to people “at the thresholds of life,” with an emphasis on people who are dying. 

Edwards founded a chapter of the group in Athens in 2023, as the Threshold Singers of Appalachia. The group has already sung for over 100 people, Edwards said.

The group sings for people for free, and only when invited. Sometimes, they sing for their own members’ friends or loved ones. But the group also partners with the OhioHealth hospice facility in Athens, which refers patients and requires that participating singers go through training.

Edwards said that when the group sings at bedside, they “don’t show up with visiting in mind” – generally only talking minimally. The goal is “to come from a place of presence and intention” and to “be present with song,” she added.

Generally, about three to four members of the group will sing softly for about 20 to 30 minutes.

The group sings for some people several times. For others, the group is called in to sing for the first time when the person is very close to death. 

“We have enough different songs in our repertoire that we can gauge the situation and pick the songs for certain situations,” said Carol Blyth, a choir member. “Some songs are more appropriate for somebody who’s really, really close to dying. Some songs are more appropriate to someone who’s still alert.”

While the group’s official repertoire is secular, it sings with people of all faith traditions and will sing hymns when appropriate, which Blyth said “really resonate with people who sang hymns growing up.”

The Independent attended a June 5 practice of the choir. Just that Thursday morning, three members sang with someone Edwards said was very close to death.

“If someone’s close to death, singing songs that are familiar to them, words that they may know, actually can set them back from their letting go, because they go to the past instead of moving on, letting go,” Edwards said. “So, when we sing for someone close to death, we only sing [official] Threshold songs.”

In addition to a repertoire of music, Threshold Singers of Appalachia also relies on the national organization for training and standards.

“It’s fine for people to just want to go sing at bedside and, you know, make beautiful music, but there is also a responsibility,” Edwards said. “There are policies, procedures, things that [the national organization has] learned by doing this work at bedside for all these years that really help the patient and the family be able to receive strangers coming to sing for them. And so, there’s a lot of education that we do as a group to learn those things.”

Edwards first encountered Threshold Choir at a 2001 conference of the Sister Singers Network, which she attended with Athens’ Calliope Feminist Choir.

The founder of the then-recently formed, national Threshold Choir “just had us singing to each other – these really soft, kind of one-line, two-line, songs,” Edwards said. “It wasn’t a performance at all. It was just singing to each other – and these really beautiful words. The lyrics are simple, and there’s harmony – easy harmony. I just thought it was really wonderful to learn.”

Edwards met with a group of singers locally for a while thereafter that sang from the Threshold Choir’s repertoire. The group fizzled out. But when she sang to her mother as she died, Edwards was re-inspired by Threshold Choir’s mission of “singing for those at the thresholds of life.”

So when she moved to Salt Lake City, Edwards got in touch with members of a defunct Threshold Choir chapter, and the group got back together. It was there that Edwards had her first experiences singing with the choir at the bedsides of people who were dying. The experience prepared her, when she moved back to Athens, to get an area chapter off the ground.

“I had learned a lot about the administrative side, and I knew that I could make it happen,” Edwards said.

Now, the group is nine members strong and, in Edwards’ view, cohesive and experienced enough that they’re ready to grow. In particular, Edwards said she hopes to encourage younger people to join.

Joining the choir can be a process – Edwards said it can take about six months to onboard new singers and prepare them to sing at bedside. But Blyth said the experience is well worth the effort.

“You’re giving someone a gift at the very end of their life – as they’re crossing over the threshold – that you hope is helping them feel more peaceful, feel more ease, making that transition and that ability to let go just a little bit easier,” Blyth said.

Rehearsals take place on the first and third Thursday of each month at 2 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Athens, 184 Longview Heights Road. More information on how to join the Threshold Singers of Appalachia is available on the group’s website.

Disclosure: Dani Kington sings alongside Edwards and Blyth in Calliope Feminist Choir.