Proceedings, Oxford, UK (2002) - World Federation of Music Therapy

considered this ending was timely. For about 2 months, I prepared her for
the ending, but I was not sure whether she understood what ending
meant. Perhaps, she assumed it was like the short break from music
therapy as before. However, 2 weeks after the actual ending date, I
received a call from her mother. Apparently, every Tuesday and
Thursday, she still insisted on coming to music therapy. In a month, I got
a call from her again, this time her mother was crying. She explained that
Sumi had been crying uncontrollably for days, became very depressed,
and that day she even attacked her teacher at school. She was never a
violent child. During that month, her behaviour deteriorated. She cried at
school and at home and often shouted ‘Let’s go to music therapy’. It
seemed she did not know what ending meant, and then she was mourning
the loss. Because of the inconsolability of her mourning, her mother and I
arranged ‘up to 6 months fixed term once a week individual therapy’ to
help the child and prepare her to the ending. When she returned, she was
at first exhilarated, then slowly began to show moments of real
tenderness and care towards me. There was one moment that I almost fell
asleep, and she simply put her hand on my lap and looked at me with
patience. Wonderfully strange that she was not only able to forgive my
failing to attend her in that moment, she was also behaving like a big
sister looking after the therapist. There is a false and true reparation on
Klein’s concept. True is based on love and respect for the object. She was
behaving a head taller and this second ending, she was able to leave me
and music therapy peacefully. It was a completely opposite case from
Sam that he could not believe that we could return to each other in music
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