Stop For a Minute

Photo by Laura Schneider, Layout design by Stephanie Jeffreys

Call lights are flashing, It’s time to go

What’s on the other side, we never know

How may I help you, is what I say

All I wanna do is take your pain away

Would you stop for a minute

Please hold my hand

I can see in your eyes

that you understand

Would you stop for a minute?

Anna Marie Henderson and I wrote this song a year ago just when we were figuring out how to thrive in a pandemic. We had been sitting and talking about how it was all going and she told me the story of one of her patients who was very ill and asked her to ‘stop for a minute and hold her hand.’ There is one room on our unit where you can see a small tree growing outside the window and when she was sitting and holding her hand, she saw raindrops falling ‘like teardrops from a branch’ and as time passed the patient was comforted and more relaxed.

We also talked about what is like to work a 12 hour shift in such an intense environment. We work in the Palliative and Hospice care environment and we see so many different types of patients in all age ranges that are getting close to the end of their lives. We spend our days comforting not only the patients but also their family and friends and Anna and I both find it to be very meaningful work that we are blessed to do. We talked about how we come home, sometimes depleted and we turn to our significant others to ‘stop for a minute and hold our hands’ (or our broken bodies from the stress of the day!)

What I love about this song is that it’s a reminder that we are all here and present to care for each other, no matter what the role is. Sometimes in that ‘pause’ is where we realize where we need to take a breath and re-center our focus on what is going on, and it benefits not only the patient, but ourselves and our co-workers as well.

When we took it to the studio, I was so honored to have Anna come and sing too! She is a gifted artist and performs as ‘Anna Marie’ in the community and is about to release her own album. I also hear her singing to the patients on a regular basis and comforting them with her soothing voice and putting them at ease with her gentle demeanor. She truly cares and takes the time to ‘stop for a minute’ to help those in need.

I put together some photos for a lyric video from what we’ve seen and done this past year. It’s really something to reflect on what we’ve been through and see how we used compassion, humor and love to get through a very strange and scary time. Here is ‘Stop for a Minute’

Written and Performed by Megan Palmer (vocals, violins, acoustic guitar) & Anna Marie Henderson (vocal)

Megan Coleman (drums) Jack Lawrence (bass guitar) Jon James Tourville (pedal steel guitar) Andrija Tokic (producer, mixing, drum loop) and mastering by John Baldwin.

Recorded at The Bomb Shelter Studio in Nashville TN