(Host) Many families struggling with a terminal illness turn to their local hospice organization for help.

Hospice nurses and volunteers provide much needed medical care, home visits and support for patients and their families.

In many parts of Vermont, Hospice volunteers also provide comfort another way - with music. VPR's Nina Keck has more.

(Angel Band plays) 

(Keck) Trillium is like many volunteer choirs. Except that when this Rutland singing group gives a concert - it's for someone who's dying.

(Angel Band plays)

(Keck) Singer Steve Pigeon lives in Middletown Springs. Like many in the group, he says hospice was there for his family when they needed it. Performing with Trillium, he says, is a way to reach out to other families who are hurting and give back.

(Angel band plays)

(Pigeon) "So many times the person is more ready to die than the family is ready to let them. And singing these songs is a way of allowing the issue to come up in a very gentle way and allowing people to think, to have it said in the room that death is coming. And it's magical."

(Music plays )

(Pigeon) "And there was one time, when we thought the person was dying. And we learned the person was doing well that day. It was a good day for her and she had invited a bunch of friends and family and she was throwing a little concert - yeah (chuckles) - and it was incredible. As we sang one of the more dancy toons - the mother danced with her daughter . . . and then with her son . . . . (chokes up) and what else could you give?"

(hospital sounds)

(Keck) Carol Horton-Owen stands outside her mother's hospital room. She smiles as she remembers how her mother danced that day.

(Hoton-Owen) "She likes that song Fly Away - and she started singing with them and bee-bopping with them on that. They said it was the first time they'd had anybody dance (laughs)."

(Keck) Carol's mother, Gayle Sheldon, was diagnosed with brain cancer in June. On this particular October evening, the 71-year old Rutland woman lies nearly motionless in a hospital bed. Her four children, grandchildren and a few close friends stand nearby.

(sound of entering room) "Mom you've got some people who are going to sing for you!"

(Keck) The family says music has been one of the few things that have helped their mother to relax. They asked members of Trillium to sing for her one last time in the hospital.

(I'll Fly Away plays)

"This is your song mom - it's the one you like. Are you going to get up and dance? (soft laughter)

(Keck) Carol sits on the edge of the bed and holds her mother's hand. Everyone in the room smiles as it begins to move slightly in time with the music. She knows you're here, Carol mouths to the singers as tears stream down her face. . . . She knows you're here.

(I'll Fly Away plays)

(Keck) Gayle Sheldon's son, David Sheldon Junior, stands outside her hospital room after the concert. His mother was a very giving person he says - always reaching out and doing for others. It meant the world to be able to give her something so beautiful back.

(I'll Fly Away plays)

(David Sheldon) "My mother really liked it. She's always loved music. And to know that the music was coming just for her. I know how much it soothes here and I know how much it brings her peace. And for these folks to come in here and share that is just enormous . . . just an enormous thing."

(Kutcho Song)

(Norford) "I'm Lauren Norford, I'm from Pittsford. I had both parents going through hospice in the last two years. And one of the most challenging parts of it was to feel like you didn't have anything to offer - with your own parent of course that's really difficult. As part of my healing experience I felt a real longing to want to give back. I feel like we're giving love and light to the patient - and through music it's really transmitting that to the person and it's very real and very sacred. And it gives to everyone."

(Keck) Singer Nelson Jayquay of Tinmouth says that while they sing for people who may be closer to death, he says as humans, we're all on the same journey.

(Jayquay) "It's not just that we're singing for the patient. There's an amazing community when we're singing among all of us who are mortal. Sharing . . . what we have to give to each other. The human voice in harmony - one voice supporting another - that's what it's supposed to be.

(Keck) And in this setting, he says, it is.

For VPR news, I'm Nina Keck.

(Good Night plays)

(Host) That's the hospice singing group Trillium performing in Rutland. If you'd like to find out about a hospice singing group in your area - you can call the Hospice and Palliative Care Council of Vermont at (802) 229-0579.

Gayle Sheldon could hear crickets cheep at the setting sun when the stranger began to sing. "There are angels hovering 'round/There are angels hovering 'round …" Sheldon, sitting outside her small Rutland house with its big wheelchair ramp, listened as the lone female voice melded into a choir of three sopranos, three altos, two tenors and two basses.

"There are angels, angels, hovering 'round/To carry the tidings home."

Sheldon, 71, hoped so. This past June, doctors told her she had glioblastoma. Pronounced gleo-blast-oh-ma, that meant she had a cancerous brain tumor. That meant at least two people would have to care for her at all times.

"It's kind of tough to watch my mother fade away," her daughter Carol Horton-Owen said.

But early one evening in late September, Sheldon and more than a dozen family members, friends and neighbors momentarily forgot that. Lounging in lawn chairs on the driveway, they listened to a choir formed especially for them.

The group, named Trillium, is a new initiative of the Rutland Area Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice. It's one of a growing number of choruses in the state and nation singing to people who are ill or dying.

"Music seems to soothe her when she's having a rough day," Sheldon's daughter said just before the start of the driveway concert.

Singing to comfort and console is a centuries-old tradition. Medieval monks chanted. Hindus sang hymns. But as an organized effort, it's a new trend in the United States.

A Threshold Choir formed in California in 2000 has spawned more than 30 same-named groups in at least a dozen states. In Vermont, a group of friends formed Brattleboro's Hallowell choir in 2003, inspiring the creation of similar choruses in Bennington, Burlington, Middlebury, Montpelier, Randolph and St. Johnsbury.

Some 50 volunteers from Rutland and surrounding towns gathered at Grace Congregational Church last spring to rehearse hymns, rounds and chants, then went to the visiting nurse association for three hours of hospice training. This fall, breaking into small groups, they're performing in local residences, hospital rooms and nursing homes.

Their do-re-mi comes with a few dos and don'ts. Don't, for example, talk to patients if you're standing at the foot of their bed or else they'll feel obligated to sit up.

Do, however, inquire what they want and need to hear. Some people crave spirituals ("O Sing to Me of Heaven") while others prefer secular titles ("Love Call Me Home"). Some like songs with a message, while others don't want to focus on words but instead on letting go (the one-word African chant "Khutso" — which means peace — is good for that).

Sheldon learned of the choir when she became a hospice patient in September. Born in Danby and schooled in Rutland, she had cared for several dying family members even as she had survived colon cancer.

"My mother has always been a caregiver," her daughter said. "She's always given."

Then the brain tumor took over.

On the evening of the driveway concert, Sheldon's family passed around apple cider and frosted doughnuts and pointed to beef stew and macaroni and cheese on the stove. The singers, lining up in front of the garage, introduced themselves and the history of their group. Even so, some in the audience didn't quite understand.

"Will I get to dance?" Sheldon's brother Norman Lamoria asked.

It's more about listening, a family member whispered. That's when Licia Gambino Hamilton — who, with Mariah Freemole, assists musical director Mary Barron — blew into a pitch pipe to give singers their first note.

Everyone sang "Angels Hovering Round" as Sheldon's son-in-law circled with a camcorder.

"Sing it again," Lamoria said.

Instead, the choir launched into "Angel Band": "My latest sun is sinking fast/My race is nearly run/My strongest trials now are past/My triumph has begun …"

Halfway through, Sheldon motioned for her daughter to help her out of her wheelchair. The choir members, looking worried, kept singing as Sheldon, draped in a blanket that dragged along the pavement, took her daughter's hand and began waltzing.

"You still got it, Gayle," a friend said as Sheldon moved on to dance with her son David.

The choir is getting used to such surprises. The day before, the group sang for member Vickie Gillhouse's grandmother.

"My grandma keeps wanting me to introduce her to some nice elderly gentlemen," Gillhouse had told her fellow singers. "It doesn't matter what they look like — she can't see."

The resulting laughter felt loving and light.

The choir blends a variety of voices. Danielle Merrill, a 22-year-old alto from Clarendon, is a phlebotomist and emergency medical technician. Richard Nordmeyer, a 71-year-old bass from Castleton, is a member of a local barbershop chorus. He sums up each member's reason for gathering: "I love singing, and it's singing for a really worthwhile cause."

The choir performs for an equally diverse mix of ill and dying patients.

"Our tag line for Trillium is 'singers of comfort, hope and healing,'" says Randi Cohn, hospice volunteer services coordinator. "Those three words span the emotional and physical support we hope our music will provide, whether we are singing for a hospice patient, a resident in a nursing facility or for family members at a memorial service."

In the driveway, the choir sang for 45 minutes until the sun set over the clothesline. Sheldon, feeling a chill, asked for a second blanket and one last song.

"I still have joy, I still have joy!" the group began. "After all the things I've been through, I still have joy!"

Three weeks later, the choir gathered again for Sheldon. This time, she was at Rutland Regional Medical Center in a room for patients living their last days.

"Mama, you have some guests who have come back to see you," her daughter said.

Sheldon, eyes closed, laid still and silent in bed. As the group began to sing, her daughter asked if she could hear. Sheldon strained to squeeze her hand in affirmation.

The choir reprised "Angels Hovering Round" and "Angel Band." It then launched into Sheldon's favorite song, "I'll Fly Away."

"Just a few more weary days and then/I'll fly away/To a land where true joys never end/I'll fly away."

Sheldon died four days later, on Oct. 19. But on this evening, as her family tearfully joined in the chorus, the woman in the hospital bed slowly sat up and, still pulsing with life, took hold of her daughter's hands.

Contact Kevin O'Connor at kevin.oconnor@rutlandherald.com.