Please note: this piece contains content that some readers may find upsetting.
Let’s call her Kate. I got to know her when we joined the choir, walked together and sang together. I admired her quiet resilience when her husband died suddenly: the way she held herself and slowly went back to her campaigning activities.
Then she went to America to visit family and was hit, catastrophically, by a truck. Her family emailed us to say she had sustained major injuries and was in a coma. But thanks to the diligence and persistence of her family (and her foresight in taking out travel insurance) she was able to be treated in hospital long enough for the medics to agree she could travel home to hospital here.
She has not recovered consciousness but her doctors believe she may be able to hear. So how to show our care and friendship for her now?
Individually we were reticent about visiting an Intensive Care Unit and unsure how to behave with someone unconscious and so gravely ill. But those of us who know Kate were inspired by one good friend who suggested we should go in small groups and sing with her when her visiting rota and nursing routines allowed. We sing songs she had sung with us, gentle ones, quietly. And we have learned to watch for signs that she might be hearing us. That way we have supported one another in our friendship and are learning, slowly, how not to be intimidated by serious illness, hospitals and Intensive Care.
There’s no miraculous cure in this story, nor even a happy ending. But by encouraging one another we are able to visit Kate, sing the songs she had sung with us and let her know that her friends are there to sing for her.
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