– Click here for soundshow

AUBURN – Jaime Eller eased her bow across the violin strings, and the strains of “Edelweiss” meandered through the hall at Hospice House.

The song found its way under closed doors and into patients’ rooms. Slowly, as slow as the song’s melody, doors began to open. Some patients stayed in their rooms, grateful for the music but not ready or able to make their way into the hall.

Others gathered around Eller, a social worker at the hospice, and guitarist Karen Flynn. The guitar has been a Friday tradition since the hospice opened two years ago, Flynn said.

She’d like to expand the program by bringing in local musicians, choruses, choirs and other volunteers to perform weekly. It would involve some training and a good deal of understanding from the musicians.

“Music makes people very emotional,” Flynn said. “It’s good for them – it unfreezes; it’s cathartic.”

On this day, it made Cecile Robichaud cry a bit.

She was in her wheelchair in the kitchen when she heard Eller’s violin. Her husband played the fiddle, Robichaud said, but he’s no longer here. A nursing assistant wheeled Robichaud into the hallway in front of the musicians. She sat there for the next half-hour, wiping the occasional tear and recalling her husband.

Don Thompson of Avon wheeled his chair right next to Flynn. A seven-week resident of the house, Thompson waited for the two musicians to begin his favorite song, “Red River Valley.” He wanted to sing along.

“It’s the only song I know,” he said.

By they time they finished their set, Flynn and Eller had been joined by a half-dozen hospice patients.

“This is not a residence,” said Flynn, who is also the manager of the hospice. “People don’t come here to live. They come here for treatment and for stabilization. And frequently, they die here.”

She uses music as a therapeutic tool, setting aside part of every Friday to play for the patients and family staying in the house. Eller joined her this past summer, adding classical violin and Irish fiddle tunes to Flynn’s repertoire.

“We play for families as much as the patients,” Flynn said. Many call the hospice home, for weeks at a time.

“People are sitting in a vigil when someone they love is dying.” It can happen quickly, or over weeks.

“It’s not like death on television at all,” she said. “It’s a very soulful time. There’s a great deal of life review, which is why music is so great and why we try to play what the people want.”

And bringing people out of their rooms is very important.

“People get very focused on what’s going on in the rooms,” Flynn said. “But we’ve learned that when they come out, they create a great support experience for each other.”