Francesca Bonacini’s scientific contributions

In a society where death is concealed because it instills fear, hospice remains one of the few places where one can still openly say the word death, and where death can be made explicit. Since 2020, at Casa Madonna dell'Uliveto Hospice (Reggio Emilia, Italy) the practice of the farewell ritual has been offered to patients and their families who wish to participate to help family members to say goodbye to their loved one. This way of concluding is also used to reactivate a rituality, often lost in our culture, that supports and sustains the grieving process. For the hospice team, the ritual is an experience of care that has developed in professionals a cultural and spiritual competence: this competence helps the patient, first, the family members, and the team to make the relationships and experiences of life that are created in hospice meaningful. For music therapists, it is important to include rituals (from simple to most profound) in this work: contributing to the creation of rituals is a way to complete the work with patients and bid them farewell. Moreover, it allows the music therapists to take care of themselves. Clinical cases are presented.