A SONG FOR THE DYING.

Harp vigils give solace and courage to both those who are dying and their loved ones.

Therese Schroeder-Sheker is at her best when most of us are at our worst: In the company of the dying, she gains strength and is able to pass courage back.

She learned of her gift in 1972 during an encounter with a man she calls an angel, explaining, "An angel gives you something that changes your life, and he changed my life." She was, at the time, a classical harpist embarking on her professional career while moonlighting in a Denver nursing home. Mr. Lattimore, the most ornery patient on the floor, was dying of emphysema.

"I went into his room, and I could hear the death rattle," Schroeder-Sheker remembers. "He was thrashing. It was frightening for both of us. I offered my hand. Rather than push me away, as he always had, he grabbed it. He was afraid, and more than that, he needed presence. He needed a witness." She cradled him and started to sing. "I sang my way through the Mass of the Angels and the Salve Regina. We began to breathe together. I sang Gregorian chants. Long after his heart ceased to beat, I held him.

"Walking home that night. I thought of three words---musical, sacramental, and midwifery. Death is birthing into another realm. If a woman in labor is frightened, she fights her contractions. But if she's learned breathing--to go with it--there is less agony."

Schroeder-Sheker acted on her epiphany immediately. As she continued to study music and, subsequently, to teach at Regis University in Denver, she developed a methodology and performed more vigils. She learned of similar work done by French monks in the 11 th century and studied the music and instructions they laid down for achieving a "blessed death."

By the mid-1980s, Schroeder-Sheker was teaching a course in death vigils and participating in more of them, sometimes aided by her students. She gave her efforts a name: the Chalice of Repose Project. "A chalice is an empty vessel that can be filled with Spirit," she says. "And repose means a place where we experience deep, intimate rest."

Music as therapy is nothing new: Traumatized soldiers returning from World War II were soothed with music in hospitals, and today there are more than 5,000 certified music therapists in the United States. But from the start, the Chalice Project was about music for the dying. Schroeder-Sheker considers herself a music-thanatologist--from the Greek thanatos, meaning death--and says, "Ours is a contemplative practice with clinical applications." She can seem esoteric but stresses the science of her methods. Even with some unconscious patients, she says, "we can change heart rate and respiration. The entire skin surface serves as an extension of the ear."

Once Schroeder-Sheker had organized her teachings and procedures for the vigils, she became an evangelist for music-thanatology, telling hospitals everywhere about its benefits. In 1990 she gave a talk at St. Patrick Hospital, a Catholic hospital sponsored by the Sisters of Providence in Missoula, Montana. Lawrence White, the hospital's president, recalls, "Therese did this presentation, and doctors were crying. You don't see that in this business. You can spend years studying, and out of the blue you encounter knowledge that is foreign but absolutely pertinent." White told Schroeder-Sheker her mission could have a home at St. Pat.

"I was a skeptic," says Dr. Stephen Speckart, a 25-year veteran oncologist. "I wondered if this woman was a mystic." Today, Speckart is the medical director of the Chalice Project. "I have seen nothing as effective as this. We can now reduce pain medications for the dying by a significant amount."

The vigils aren't meant just as painkillers, of course. "We try to work with the patient's pain," says Schroeder-Sheker, "but also give the family a way to share. Sometimes they're the ones who need rest or need to let go."

Most folks in Missoula have taken Chalice to their hearts. The late Michael Morris, who was a justice of the peace in town, turned to Chalice in the last stages of his cancer in 1996, saying the music "made a place for me to accept my death." That's all his fellow Missoulans needed to know.

The Chalice Project is now an institution. More than 100 doctors have referred patients. Harpists are on duty 365 days a year, and teams of Chalice musicians make "mercy runs" out of town at a moment's notice. Foundations, private donors, and the hospital support Chalice services--the Project has an annual budget of $600,000--and no individual seeking comfort is denied. Chalice veterans teach alongside Schroeder-Sheker in the project's school, where a rigorous two-year program starts with study of the ancient Gilgamesh epic, travels through a medieval Latin death ritual, and on to graduation. Then the students are ready for service.

Today, at St. Patrick, a vigil has been prescribed, and Schroeder-Sheker herself answers the call She hurries down the hospital's corridors, carrying her harp like a balsa-weight cross. She arrives at the room, composes herself, and enters. She learns that the ill person is, as the physicians call it, "actively dying." As she sets up quietly in the corner, she hears a plea to the patient: "You said you wouldn't leave us!"

Schroeder-Sheker is in no way immune to the emotions of the moment, but she can't be of assistance unless she maintains a sense of calm. She puts the harp to her left shoulder, fingers the strings, and starts to play. Gently. The patient glides in and out of consciousness, eyes wandering, lingering for a time on Schroeder-Sheker's face. She is careful to keep her countenance comforting.

She plays an Irish air, "The Gartan Mother's Lullaby," at a slow tempo. The music seems to guide the patient away from the realm of beeping monitors, away from this antiseptic hospital room, toward something beautiful and restful. All conversation has stopped, and then the patient's spouse says. "It's OK, it's OK. You can go." There is an exhalation, audible to all. The patient has died. The music continues even as a doctor notes time and cause. Nurses switch off machinery. Harp song is a backdrop for soft sobbing. The harpist has helped as best she could.

LYNN JOHNSON is a photographer living in Pittsburgh. JOSHUA SIMON is a writer who lives in New York City. For more information on Chalice of Repose, visit www.saintpatrick.org.