Musical Encounters with Dying

Islene Runningdeer is a music therapist with the Advanced Illness Care Team at Gifford Medical Center in Randolph, Vermont. In 2001 she convinced the Director of the Central Vermont Palliative Care and Hospice Team to allow her to demonstrate the effectiveness of music therapy with a brief pilot program. The positive results were immediately seen, and she was given a position on the clinical team. Islene also has experience as a professional pianist and music teacher. She lives in Vermont.

“Islene Runningdeer is an artist in sound. Her experiences of ministering to the dying (and the people who love them) through music and song are beautifully rendered here in the stories of Agnus, Kathy, Winifred, Ethan, and many other memorable souls who belong to her colorful, crusty, welcoming, challenging community. This is a book for aspiring music therapists, hospice teams, caregivers, and anyone who will someday face death. Oh...that's all of us, is it? Then let us all read this work of this wise musician, an experienced caregiver herself, and let us all sing the praises of these stories of our parents, sisters, brothers, neighbors, and friends, and how they were touched by compassionate care, and music.”

• Acknowledgements. Notes on the Text. Foreword by Diana Peirce. Preface. 1.The Death Song: Historical and Therapeutic Perspectives. 2. The Relationship. 3. Some Things the Dying Need to Do. 4. The Safety of Culture. 5. Difficult Emotions. 6. Music is a Visual Art. 7. The Disabled and Mentally Ill. 8. The Rich and the Poor. 9. The Will to Live, The Will to Die. 10. Self-Care: Breathing Life into My Life. 11. Colophon: Lessons and Final Thoughts. Index.