If you’re grieving, choir might help.
Content warning
Bereavement
The short story
It took her a minute to realize that she was indeed at least somewhat conscious – it was still dark. “Must be that time again”, she thought wearily as she slowly pushed herself up, slid into her slippers and shuffled to the toilet. It was only when she was on her way back to bed from this annoyingly usual 5am bathroom break and saw her empty bed that it hit her again, like a gut punch: her love was gone.
It had been 12 days since Max had died of ovarian cancer. The worst one. Often missed, late diagnosed by a sexist medical establishment and so very hard to fight. It was hard not to be bitter about it.
It was a beautiful day, sunny but breezy so that a light jacket was just enough. She’d forced herself to go outside; she could hear Max’s voice in her head, “sure it’s a beautiful day out, love, gotta make the most of it!” It’d been 30 days. She walked for a bit.
Summer had arrived and Max’s kids had come round for a cup of tea and cake and, she knew, to make sure she was awake and dressed and functioning. She knew they meant well but she wished they’d leave her to wallow alone. She was grieving. Her annoyance was only undercut by her knowledge that while she may have lost the love of her life, they had lost their mother, and they were grieving too. It’d been 97 days. She sipped her tea and smiled and made small talk.
She was watching the 6 o’clock news, hearing Max’s running commentary in her mind’s ear (“oh come off it, don’t you have anything better to tell us about?” “what an absolute state the world is in, absolute state…” “oh hey that’s fun, thanks sooooooooo much for the silver lining, Barry”). A knock on the door interrupted her train of thought. It was Yvonne, one of her closest, and still alive, friends.
“Oh, good, you’re dressed. Come on, I’m taking you to choir tonight”, she said as she walked into the house. “…what?” was all she managed to utter in response. “Choir. You know, lots of people, singing together, la la la. You know I sing in a choir,” she continued in response to my blank expression. “I know you’re grieving and I’m not trying to force you into or out of anything, but I think getting out of the house will do you some good. Plus, you don’t actually have to talk to anyone cause we’re all busy singing. I’m bringing you as my “bring a friend” friend for the start of the new season.” With that, she took her by the arm and led her to the car, still a little stunned. It’d been 130 days. She went to choir.
She settled in next to Yvonne and looked around while her friend greeted several choir friends. She felt a wave of gratitude that Yvonne didn’t make her meet all these new people. It would have been too much. It was mostly other people around their age, though a few younger faces were scattered throughout the group. Suddenly the choir director called for everyone to stand up for a warmup. He exuded so much more energy and charisma than you might have expected from someone his size. He was nearly bouncing up and down as he paced a few steps back and forth inviting the choir to… start fireworks?! “Ok now light your match – tshhhhhk! – light the fuse – blublublublublublublublub – and here we gooooo pew pewwwwwwwwwwww pew peeeeeeeeew woooooooooo pewwwwwwww” and everyone else was just as enthusiastically just… doing it. “What on earth have I walked into?!” she thought. The rehearsal continued in much the same vibe (“One, two, threeeeeee” “Altos, you’ve done your homework, well done! Sopranos…… mm” “Reaaaaaaally milk it here, just wah waaaaaaaaaaah waaaaaaaaaaah waaaaaaaaaaaaah waaah waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”). She hadn’t been around so much camp since, well, she couldn’t remember when but it was probably at some queer thing with Max. She felt a pang of guilt as she realized she hadn’t thought of Max in a little while, concentrated as she was on trying to follow along with the music and trying not to be amused by the man energetically gesticulating in front of her (she was sad, dammit!). Then again, Max probably wouldn’t mind.
She bowed with the rest of the choir as the audience enthusiastically applauded their final performance of the season. It had been a rush to finally pull it all together and play with an orchestra, for someone other than each other. She knew Max would have loved to be in the audience. In fact, her spirit probably was. Though she knew she’d never really be fully ‘over it’, she knew she never had to be. There would always be a hole in her heart left by this loss, but it would grow smaller as her life, and heart, continued to grow around it. She was grateful that Yvonne had knocked on her door those many months ago to bring her back to connection with people, to making music, to community and yes, to camp too. Her little queer heart was healing. It’d been 311 days. She drove home and went to bed.
This story was originally written in English.
The paper
Fancourt, D., Finn, S., Warran, K., & Wiseman, T. (2022). Group singing in bereavement: Effects on mental health, self-efficacy, self-esteem and well-being. BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care, 12(e4), e607–e615. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjspcare-2018-001642
Connection between story and paper
Grief is complicated, often taking time to work through. While counselling and medication are some ways to cope with grief, social connection is becoming recognized as another useful tool for working through grief. This paper explores group singing in a choir as a way to cope with grief in people who have lost loved ones to cancer. Twenty-nine people who were bereaved through cancer in the last five years chose to participate in existing choirs for people affected by cancer (patients, carers, hospital staff, family, etc.) for 12 weeks; the other 29 bereaved individuals formed the control group with no treatment. Measures of mental health, well-being, self-esteem and self-efficacy were taken at weeks 0, 6, 12 and 24 of the intervention (or lack thereof; the last time point is a follow-up point).
Results indicated that symptoms of depression and anxiety (mental health), well-being and self-esteem got worse over time for the control group but remained steady for the choir singers. Self-efficacy improved in choir singers but the control group remained steady. Overall, the individuals who sang in a choir showed stable symptoms of mental health and wellbeing and even saw an improvement in self-efficacy.
In the story, the main character is struggling with her grief, depressed and unwell. Her friend has to drag her to choir, which she resists at first. But after awhile, singing with other people – without even necessarily socializing at first but could do more of with time – brings her to a place where she can better cope with her grief. The loss never goes away, but she builds resilience through community and is better able to get through day to day life.
The author
Sarah is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Lincoln where she runs the Feminist Music Science (FeMS) Lab. She is a host for the ReproducibiliTea Podcast, co-lead of the FORRT Citational Politics Working Group and member of the Feminist Wonderlab Collective.
