A Blessing For The Journey – Song Commission

In January 2026, I was approached by Aisling Pelan from the Belfast Trust to compose a piece of music centred around the theme ‘Dying Well’, to mark the launch of the Belfast Community Palliative Care Hub at Stormont.

As Aisling and I talked about the project, I realised that I had known her late father, Dr Tom McGinley, a palliative care consultant at Foyle Hospice in Derry.

Back in 2001, as a newly qualified music therapist, I applied for a music therapy post at the hospice. In those days, music therapy was still relatively unknown here, and jobs in the profession were few and far between, so there were many applicants. I was interviewed by Tom, and although I was up against therapists with considerably more experience than me, he saw something in me and offered me the job.

I was only at Foyle Hospice for around four years, but that experience shaped me profoundly, and I have worked in palliative care ever since, at Northern Ireland Hospice.

So, in many ways, Aisling contacting me all these years later to create a piece of music about dying well felt like a remarkable full-circle moment. My journey in palliative care had begun, in part, because her father had believed in me.

When I discovered that Aisling’s daughter, Molly, was a young harpist, I felt there was something very meaningful about bringing another generation into the story. I decided that I wanted harp to be part of the piece, and invited Molly into the studio to play on the final recording.

I also knew that I wanted a string section. String arranging had been one of John’s specialities, and it was something I had never done before. So, as I began to write, I found myself holding both Tom and John in my thoughts.

Part of what I believe a ‘good death’ can mean is being surrounded by the people we love; having the opportunity to be close, to say goodbye, and to accompany one another through those final moments.

Tom died in hospital at the beginning of Covid, when restrictions meant that visitors were not allowed, and Aisling and Molly were unable to be with him. I, too, had been unable to be with John at the end.

And so, although I was writing a piece about dying well, I was also writing from a very personal place of loss — and of the things that cannot always be changed or put right.

There was something deeply poignant, but also healing, about bringing all of these threads together: Tom, who gave me the opportunity that began my own journey in palliative care; Aisling and Molly; John and his love of strings; my own experiences of accompanying people at the end of their lives; and the question of what it means to die well.

The music became, in its own quiet way, a piece about connection, love, loss and accompaniment — and about how the threads of our lives can continue to meet in unexpected ways, long after someone is gone.

To listen to A Blessing for the Journey – click here:

A photograph of a very young me circa 2001 on the left and Dr. Tom on the right at Foyle Hospice, Derry