Final Chapters

In song and the spirit, a chaplain helps patients tell their last stories

On a CD she recorded in the 1990s, Maggie Finley, performing under the name Asa Harris, searched for "Someone to Watch Over Me." These days, she helps watch over some of the most vulnerable people in the community, those approaching the end of life.

As a chaplain with Providence Hospice of Seattle, Finley, 59, often sees three to six patients a day around the Seattle area.

It's been quite a shift — geographically and professionally — for Finley, who grew up in Philadelphia and lived in St. Louis and Chicago before her husband's work as a marine surveyor brought her to Seattle in 2003.

Her father, Ace Harris, was a singer, pianist and arranger for the original Ink Spots in the 1930s. Her uncle, Erskine Hawkins, was a jazz trumpeter and composer, who composed the classic "Tuxedo Junction."

But just as music runs in her veins, so does a quest for spirituality. "My father's father was a minister, and my father started out singing in church," she said. "So I guess I've come full circle."

Q: What actually is hospice work?

A: This work is to death what midwifing would be to life. Helping a person get from this life to the next phase. It's a natural transition. I function as part of a care team with a nurse, a medical social worker and a home-health aide.

Q: What is a chaplain's role?

A: Sometimes the chaplain may be the only one who doesn't have a needle or a pill, who doesn't have that pharmacology or medical stuff going on. And that can be a really good intervention, just to be present and help them face what they're going through.

Q: Did an experience in your own life point you toward this?

A: Having five people die in 2 ½ years. My father had died when I was really young. But my mother and grandmother died in '91. Then my grandfather and aunt died in '92, and in '93 my uncle died. That was all the people who had been immediate family when I was growing up.

Q: You helped in your Aunt Gloria's final days.

A: She was like another mother to me. When she was dying, I was going back and forth from the Midwest to be with her in New Jersey. I talked to her a great deal, and I got some things said and done. But I left the whole thing feeling no one should have to go through this alone.

Q: How does your background as a performer help?

A: What I enjoyed about music was that it was storytelling, trying to get at the story. So that's what I'm still tapped into. And as a chaplain, my listening skills have been, hopefully, deepened. And I'm a highly social creature, very interested in human behavior.

Q: Do you ever sing to your patients?

A: Sometimes people will ask for a song, if they know that about me. And it can be very useful with a patient who may only have a moment of clarity every once in a while. I can sing them a snippet of a song and their eyes might come open or their hand may reach out. Because it's something they remember.

Q: What do you sing?

A: It has to be in the context of who that person is. I see a lot of people in their 70s, 80s and 90s, so I do a lot of Glenn Miller. And some like the old hymns, so you do "Amazing Grace," and, of course, that song never really grows old.

Q: How do you recharge yourself?

A: I really value quiet time. I have to be careful not to overcommit. And for me, as a Catholic, I value the sacramental life. I'm a member of the Seattle University faith community, and I have a spiritual director I see once a month.

Q: Are there leisure activities that help keep you going?

A: I go from nesting to doing outdoor things. That's one of the beauties of living here, and it's fairly new to me as a transplant, having all this natural beauty of so many kinds. I walk a lot, and my husband and I enjoy hiking together.

Q: Any favorite destinations?

A: We go to Mount Rainier every year, at least once or twice. To walk on that mountain is to be in the presence of something mystical. To get out on the Skyline Trail, to see the flora and the fauna and see people from all over the world. My heart just leaps out of my chest every time we go.

Q: Do your patients expect you to know what dying is like?

A: I think most people like it when you can say, "I'm not exactly in your shoes. I've not made this transition myself. But I will do my best to walk you to that door, believing that there's more on the other side, whatever you imagine it to be."

Jack Broom is a Seattle Times staff reporter. Alan Berner is a Times staff photographer.