It starts with a single note. Soft, deliberate, floating through the sterile air of the hospital room. At first, it feels like an intrusion — a ripple against the steady hum of IV drips, beeping monitors, and the hushed tones of nurses. But then, something shifts. Shoulders relax. Breathing slows. Eyes, once clouded with pain or fatigue, find focus. The harp’s music has entered the room, and with it, a presence beyond sound: comfort.
I never imagined I would become a bedside harpist. The harp had always felt like a thing of grand concert halls and fairy tales, not something you’d carry into an ICU. But when I first learned about therapeutic music—how live, intentionally played sounds could ease pain, anxiety, and even help regulate breathing or heart rates—I knew I had to try.
Therapeutic Harp as Healing
Hospitals are places of science, of measurements and diagnoses, of things you can see and quantify. But what happens when helping healing isn’t just about the body? What about the spirit? This is where therapeutic music enters, not as entertainment, but as something more elemental.
Unlike recorded music, which plays on regardless of who is listening, live therapeutic music adapts in real-time. I watch the patient’s breath and match my tempo to theirs. If they are in pain, I play slower, softer, almost as if I am rocking them to sleep. If they are anxious, I play melodies that flow like water, smooth and unbroken. Sometimes, they request a song from their past—a lullaby, an old folk tune their grandmother used to sing. In these moments, the music is more than sound. It is memory. It is home.
I start with melodies that live in my fingers, maybe today I offer Ae Fond Kiss, And I Love You So, or Gentle Maiden. Or sometimes, Somewhere Over the Rainbow. There is something about it—hopeful but wistful, dreamy yet grounded. A song about longing, about believing in something beyond what is in front of us. When I play it, nurses gather for some respite. I watch people exhale, as if for a moment they, too, are somewhere else, somewhere softer, somewhere safe.
The Patients Who Stay With Me
There are always a few. The ones I carry with me long after I leave the hospital.
A man in the ICU, unconscious, surrounded by worried family. His daughter asks if I can play something peaceful. I begin, and within moments, the tension in the room melts. His breathing, once erratic, evens out. A nurse notices and murmurs, “Keep playing.” I do. The family closes their eyes, some whispering prayers. Later, the daughter finds me in the hall and says, “It was the first moment of peace we’ve had in days.”
A woman in hospice care, barely able to speak, but her eyes shine when I pluck out the first notes of Eleanor of Usan, a slow air. I draw out the melody, fragile yet unwavering, floating above resonant arpeggios. For those few minutes, she is not a patient. She is simply herself, enveloped in a lovely tune.
A young mother holding her newborn in the NICU, both of them small and fragile, connected by tubes and wires. I play a lullaby. She doesn’t say a word, but tears slip down her face. She cradles her baby closer, rocking gently to the rhythm.
And then there are the CMO hospice patients—the ones on comfort measures only. The ones who are not expected to recover. I am called to their bedsides in medical wards, in the emergency room, in spaces where the air feels heavier. I play the music they hear as they take their last breaths. I play the music their families will remember forever.
Sometimes, they are awake. They meet my eyes, and I play for them—not just as a dying person, but as someone still alive. Other times, they are already somewhere in between. I think they hear me, I do not know, but their families do. Their nurses do. The notes settle into the moment like a benediction, marking a passage that words cannot touch.
More than once, I have played Somewhere Over the Rainbow for someone’s final moments. It seems fitting—a song about traveling beyond the troubles of here, about a place where the clouds are far behind us. Families hold hands, listen, and weep. The music doesn’t take away their grief, but it wraps around them, lets them know they are not alone.
The Power of Presence
Playing at the bedside has taught me something profound: sometimes, there are no right words. No perfect thing to say. But there is always music. It doesn’t fill the silence so much as it honors it, creating a space where healing — whatever that may look like — might unfold.
Not every story has a happy ending. Not every patient recovers. But in those moments of music, there is connection, there is relief, there is a kind of peace that lingers.
So I keep playing. One note at a time.
