Carry Me Home - Dayton's Hospice Choir

05/14/2025

It's an exciting day for Carry Me Home! After completing our training a while back at Ohio's Hospice - Dayton, today was our first day singing for a patient (and their family) in their home. In an unusual turn of events, we were able to bring a larger number of us than is typical--eight!! We shared some of our own songs, and we also had a bit of an impromptu singalong with some songs that were familiar and loved by the family. What an amazing gift it is to be able to step into doing this, after a year of preparing! Congratulations to us! Onward!!

If you are in the Dayton area, and you want to find out more about the possibility of singing with us, email us at carrymehomechoir@gmail.com!

01/14/2025

What's happening with Carry Me Home, Dayton's new hospice choir?

We took a bit of a hiatus from rehearsal for the holidays, and now we are back together, singing together, and getting ready to get out there in the community to sing with and for others.

We are planning several events to welcome new members and build our ranks. Are you a singer that might like to join us? Email us at carrymehomechoir@gmail.com today!

In a few weeks, we will also be completing our volunteer training with Ohio's Hospice - Dayton, so that our partnership with them can officially begin, allowing them to offer our gift of song to clients and families! We're looking forward to it!

Do you belong to a church or an organization that might like to learn more about our choir, or have us come and sing a few songs? Please be in touch!

Send a message to learn more

01/14/2025

In crisis, in tragedy, in transitions, there is and will always be song. Song as prayer, song as praise, song for comfort.

We are continuing to work in preparation for our mission of singing with and for families and individuals as they face the transition to the end of life.

It calls to mind lyrics to a song by Linda Hirschorn that another choir of mine sang..."In these hard times, there will always be singing. There will always be singing in these hard times."

11/19/2024

EDIT: THIS SESSION HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO FAMILY EMERGENCY AND WILL BE RESCHEDULED FOR EARLY JANUARY. FOLLOW THIS PAGE TO STAY UP TO DATE!

Do you have experience singing in a choir? Do you feel relatively confident singing in a small group? Do you have an interest or experience in health care or hospice, or an interest in service?

Carry Me Home, Dayton's Hospice Choir, has been rehearsing for a few months--it's been wonderful forming this community-- and we are almost ready to start singing for people in the last stages of life.

We are looking to build our membership, so If this mission of bringing song to people in hospice appeals to you, come to our Information Session on December 8 at 2 p.m. at David's UCC in Kettering. If you like what you hear, you're welcome to stay afterward to try out our regular rehearsal at 3!

Carry Me Home is an egalitarian non-denominational choir that is committed to serving and welcoming members and serving clients of all stripes. If you think you might like to be a part of that sort of community, come check us out.

Questions? please send us an email at carrymehomechoir@gmail.com

Please share this post with friends, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested!!

10/01/2024

Do you live in the greater Dayton area? Would you like to join us as we build a small choir to sing for hospice patients? Send us a private message - we are welcoming new voices!

Send a message to learn more

09/18/2024

A song that we love to sing together is Bobby McFerrin's beautiful and innovative setting of the 23rd Psalm.

In this interview, McFerrin talks about what it means to him and why he wrote it as he did: "[Interviewer] When I first heard the way you put Psalm 23 to music, I was moved to tears. Why did you use the word 'she' when speaking about God in that piece?

Bobby: The 23rd Psalm is dedicated to my mother. She was the driving force in my religious and spiritual education, and I have so many memories of her singing in church. But I wrote it because I’d been reading the Bible one morning, and I was thinking about God’s unconditional love, about how we crave it but have so much trouble believing we can trust it, and how we can’t fully understand it. And then I left my reading and spent time with my wife and our children. Watching her with them, the way she loved them, I realized one of the ways we’re shown a glimpse of how God loves us is through our mothers. They cherish our spirits, they demand that we become our best selves, and they take care of us."

Elizabeth Lesser, Omega's cofounder, talks with Bobby McFerrin about music, spirituality, and the joy of play. ,

09/13/2024

Members of our choir hold a variety of spiritual beliefs and follow diverse faith traditions -- from Catholicism to Judaism to atheism and more. We view our diversity as a strength, as we honor the spirit of this wonderful song by Iris DeMent (give it a listen!):

"Everybody is wondering what and where they all came from
Everybody's worrying 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me
I think I'll just let the mystery be."

Provided to YouTube by Redeye WorldwideLet the Mystery Be · Iris DeMentInfamous Angel℗ Songs of Iris/Forerunner Music, Inc. (ASCAP)Released on: 2017-06-28Art...

09/13/2024

Yesterday evening, 10 members of Carry Me Home Choir had the immense privilege of singing at the funeral of a relative of one of our own singing members. It was a great honor to be asked to participate. This was our first time actually singing for others as a choir.

We wanted to share the words some of our members shared with the choir following the gathering:

"....it is clear we have been blessed with an incredibly talented ensemble that has been called to serve a true ministry. I feel blessed to serve with you in that ministry."

"Thank you for giving us such a meaningful opportunity to sing together for others, for the first time!"

And from the member whose family member we were honoring...

"This group is a treasure. Thank you so much."

Our hearts are full.

Send a message to learn more

09/04/2024

We are moving forward! We now have 15 singers, and have been creating a wonderful community of song.

In the next month or two, we will be completing hospice volunteer training with Ohio's Hospice - Dayton. That next stage will enable us to begin to bring spirit and song to people in hospice.

As we do so, a critical part of our process will involve speaking in advance to the patient/client's family or other relevant contacts, so that we may learn a bit about the person to whom we will be singing.

This video, which we've seen before, resurfaced today, and it felt like such a powerful and moving reminder that people carry with them their entire lives--passions, careers, loves, accomplishments and more. We're not singing to a "person who is dying" or a "hospice patient." We are singing to THE person that we are meeting in that room for the first time.

If you haven't ever seen this video, please take a look. It's not exactly representative of our work, but an important reminder nonetheless.

Break out the tissues. NYC Prima Ballerina Marta C. Gonzalez Valencia suffers from Alzheimer’s. She listens to Swan Lake and it all comes back to her...“Mart...

08/19/2024

Great article from earlier this year about an independent hospice choir that has been doing work similar to Carry Me Home for 15 years! Check out their website as well (https://www.journeysongs.org/), where they have song clips and videos. Congratulations to JourneySongs - we're proud to be joining your ranks as a newcomer - we hope to be celebrating 15 at some point!!

https://figcitynews.com/2024/01/journeysongs-hospice-choir-15-years-of-bringing-comfort-through-music/

“Twilight and evening bell, / And after that the dark! / And may there be no sadness of farewell, / When I embark,” are just some of the moving lines from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem, “Crossing the Bar.” Later set to music, the song is one of many soothing and…

05/14/2024

This quote really struck me and stood out as a reminder for all of us who plan to or do work with those at the end of life:

“He has been in hospice, as you know, for almost a year and a half now, and he really is, I think, coming to the end that, as I’ve said before, there’s a part of this faith journey that is so important to him, and there’s a part of that faith journey that you only can live at the very end and I think he has been there in that space.”

Jimmy Carter’s grandson said Tuesday that the former president is “coming to the end” in a brief update about the 39th president’s health.