Death of local cantor’s husband inspires concert of hope and healing

By Maria LeDoux
Associate Editor, The Catholic Free Press

For more than three decades, Jane Shivick, a local cantor and concert soloist, and her husband, Todd Dickie, shared the gift of music and their love for one another. On Jan. 30, 2021, Mr. Dickie, 53, died of complications from COVID-19. Nearly three years later, Ms. Shivick has decided to put on a concert in his memory.
The concert, titled “Love & Transformation,” will be held Sept. 24 at 4 p.m. at Mechanics Hall. Ms. Shivick’s hope for the concert is that it is a “healing moment,” not just for her but for many who lost their loved ones in unexpected or tragic ways. The songs will evoke feelings of “compassion, empathy, and hope” and will show how “love is the ultimate form of transformation,” she said.
Ms. Shivick was inspired to plan this concert because in the last three years “the world has experienced grief … there has been a lot of pain, that a lot of people aren’t expressing.” She says the concert is for “anybody who may have experienced loss or grief. But it’s for everyone, and other people might really get something from it.”
Mr. Dickie and Ms. Shivick met at Holy Name Central Catholic High School, graduating in 1985 and 1986, respectively. Ms. Shivick has been a cantor at numerous parishes in the Worcester diocese for decades, as well as at Assumption University from 1999 to 2009. The family – they have a daughter, Megan – has belonged to Christ the King, Immaculate Conception, and Our Lady of the Angels parishes, and has been a part of the congregation at the Chapel of the Holy Spirit on the Assumption University campus.
In 1992, Mr. Dickie, who was not a Catholic at the time, would go to Mass at Blessed Sacrament Church to listen to Ms. Shivick sing. Since they worked opposite hours, it was a good place to see each other.  
One day as they were walking out of Mass, and to the shock of Ms. Shivick, Mr. Dickie said, “I am going to do this thing.”
“What thing?” she asked him.
He wanted to become a Catholic. “We had never even talked about it,” she remarked, saying that he was a quiet man, and you did not always know what he was thinking. He was baptized, confirmed, and received holy Communion at Our Lady of Loreto Church.
Ms. Shivick said that her husband had always been “servant oriented.”
In January of 2021, Ms. Shivick was the first to show symptoms of the COVID-19 virus. Shortly after, Mr. Dickie did too.
 “There was no reason to have COVID,” Ms. Shivick said. She did not even think it was the virus at first because they “followed every protocol and followed every rule.”
When Ms. Shivick was sick, she said she became “immobilized” and never wants to be that sick again.  
When her husband tested positive days later, he showed symptoms but was “visibly less sick than I was,” she said. He continued painting cabinets in the kitchen, fixing the bathroom renovations in their home and informing her of these tasks via text messages because they were following the protocols.
A few days passed and Ms. Shivick and Mr. Dickie each took their oxygen saturation levels with a pulse oximeter. The normal range is in the high 90s. Ms. Shivick’s was in the 70s and her husband’s was 39. Mr. Dickie was taken to the hospital on Jan. 24.The next day, Ms. Shivick was also admitted. Mr. Dickie was moved to the critical care unit.
It was a time when “no one could see their loved ones,” she said.
Ms. Shivick would call once a day regarding her husband’s progress. “Nobody was talking death! No one thought this,” she said.
On Jan. 29, a nurse offered to bring Ms. Shivick to see her husband through a window. “Nothing seemed out of the ordinary,” she said as he waved back at her through the glass.
The next day, the same day she was to go home, Mr. Dickie was put on a ventilator because his heart needed to rest. He was on the ventilator for about two and a half hours before doctors and nurses came into Ms. Shivick’s hospital room to tell her that her husband had gone into cardiac arrest and died.     
“I had no words. It was not something I even remotely expected or entertained the idea. Shocked is not even the right word,” she said.
Father Stephen M. Gemme, chaplain at St. Vincent Hospital. administered Mr. Dickie’s last rites.
Following the death of her husband, Ms. Shivick joined a national COVID widows’ group.  
“There isn’t one story that is not tragic, every story is tragic,” she said. People could not see their loved ones and the dying had to die alone. She noted that their daughter, who also had COVID at the same time, was home alone when she was informed of her father’s passing.
“There was no acknowledgement of the people who die from this … I have called it a war. I don’t see the difference between a widow of a shot soldier who didn’t know and what we went through,” she said.
“I don’t know how people get through tragedies without trusting faith and that God has a plan,” she said. “There have been plenty of times where I’d go to Mass and everyone is so happy and I am wondering, ‘How you are all so happy?’ I found myself thinking of Jesus’ mother and the grief she had watching her son get executed. You think about that and it puts everything into perspective.” She continued, “My husband and I were both transformed by his death. He is still with me but in heaven.”
Ms. Shivick intends for the concert to be a “healing moment … something really beautiful and touching. It is not going to be sad. At the end you will be full of hope.”
The concert will feature Olga Rogach, pianist; Caroline Reiner-Williams, cellist; and Timothy Steele, pianist, as well as guest singers: Richard Monroe, Christine Petkus, Matthew Olds, Margaret King, and Anita Carbone, all cantors in the Worcester diocese, among others.
 
- Tickets can be purchased at mechanics-hall.org or https://app.arts-people.com/index.