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Delbert and Mavis Stinson of Camby listen as Sabrina Sigal Falls plays her Celtic harp for their son, Terry, a patient in the Yellow Rose Unit at Methodist Hospital. -- John Severson / staff photo

Pulling strings for the dying
Harpist seeks to bring blessings and peace to terminally ill patients.

By Tina King
Indianapolis Star
June 22, 2002

Sabrina Sigal Falls is sitting in a dying man's hospital room. She introduces herself, although he is unconscious.

"I hope this brings you blessings and peace," she tells him.

For the next 30 minutes, she bends into her Celtic harp, plucking from the strings ethereal music so touching it makes conscious people weep. For this patient on this day, it brings calmer breathing and a chance to leave the world amid heavenly sounds.

He does not die while Falls is playing, but if he had, no one on this floor of Methodist Hospital would be surprised. This is the Yellow Rose Unit, where many terminally ill patients come to die.

Falls is a certified music practitioner who plays her harp once a week for the patients. She does not consider each private 20- to 30-minute session a performance, but rather a service. The service is to try to ease their mental and physical suffering and to provide peaceful, "letting go" music.

"To me, it's a ministry and a form of prayer and blessing," the harpist says.

Falls recently played at the bedside of Terry Stinson, 44, of Plainfield, who was moved into the Yellow Rose Unit after suffering a cardiac arrest.

His mother, Mavis Stinson, asked the harpist to play "Amazing Grace."

"It was very beautiful," Stinson says. "Although my son never regained consciousness, I'm sure it was a soothing setting." He died June 7.

Judy White, clinical manager of the Yellow Rose unit, is happy with families' reaction to the harp. "We've just been so pleased with their acceptance of this intervention," she said.

It is a project White and hospital chaplain Stan Jones started after hearing about certified music practitioners (MPs) -- not to be confused with music therapists -- in other parts of the country.

"Music is one of those interventions that everyone can relate to," White said. "It's something that is outside the realm of medicine and really speaks to the spiritual part of the individual. It treats the entire individual."

"It's really important to the staff, too," White said. "What we do is pretty sad. The harpist brings out another dimension."

The national, nonprofit training program for MPs is called Music for Healing and Transition. Graduates play different instruments and are taught how to vary pitch, rhythm and tempo to meet patients' needs. Preemies need rhythmic beats that may stabilize their heart rates; hospice patients need unfamiliar a-rhythmic music to calm them and help them let go.

Since Falls began at Methodist in March, two patients have died while she played.

One woman was alone, with no family to comfort her. Falls could feel the patient was near death, so she extended her usual 20-minute playing time.

A few minutes later, the woman stopped breathing.

"It was really a sacred moment," Falls says. "I felt so honored to be present there. I knew she wouldn't be alone because God was with her."

Falls' music was a blessing to patient Irene Edwards, says Edwards' daughter, Danelle Evans. Edwards was conscious the day Falls visited last month, and had just told her daughter about a vision in which she saw Jesus and heard a harp playing. Neither woman knew of Falls' work until the harpist arrived a few minutes later.

"God provides great timing, and God provided timing for Sabrina to play for Mother," Evans says. "There is no doubt in my mind."

Evans was so moved by the music that she had Falls play hymns at her mother's funeral a few days later.

The Yellow Rose Unit pays for Falls' work with a $13,000 grant from the Methodist Health Foundation. Some of that money will go to another harpist, Joyce Elliott of Franklin. Elliott has played at the hospital's memorial services and for their in-home hospice patients.