I have played guitar since I was 13. I retired 13 years ago, and for the first 4 years of retirement I volunteered through a hospice agency playing guitar for hospice patients in small, assisted living facilities. I would play once a week and had regular facilities that I would visit. I would go to each place every other week. Often, they all knew I was coming...some even had me in their calendars...and they would gather in the main living area. I'd play solo acoustic stuff for about 40 minutes, and ended up arranging and playing the songs from the 1940's that the patients loved. After that, I'd pass out lyric sheets and we would have a sing along for 20 minutes.
I used to tell them "you can feel lousy before I come and you can feel lousy after I leave. While I'm here, however, we are going to have fun." And have fun we did.
One of my favorite memories was of a woman who had only been in hospice a short time. I noticed she wasn't out with the rest of the folks so afterwards I went to her room. She said she had been too tired to come out so I stayed, chatted, and played for her for a while. This was in October and I told her "In two months, I'll be playing Christmas music for you." she replied "Oh, I love Christmas music."
I told her that there was no law that said I couldn't play Christmas music in October and asked what her favorites were. I played them for her and then left her to get her nap. She passed two days later and her daughter called the hospice agency to say how happy she was that her Mom had gotten to hear Christmas songs one more time.
Doing the volunteer work at hospice was one of the most rewarding things I have ever had the privilege of doing.
