He plays music to roaring crowds, but his best shows are for a much different audience.

Freddie Fuller is a country and folk music singer-songwriter who has entertained audiences at venues in and around Austin, Texas. He has recorded two albums, created a one-man show on the history of the Texas cowboy, and even performed for troops overseas. But some of the most profound performances of his life have also been some of the smallest, quietest shows.

Freddie performs personalized, acoustic concerts for people who are dying.

For the last four years, Freddie has worked with a small nonprofit called Swan Songs to bring the gift of music to people facing terminal diagnoses. Freddie and other Swan Songs musicians have played over 500 intimate concerts as a celebration of life for people nearing death, as well as their loved ones.

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Heroes

A dad's heartbreaking list of things he learned after his son passed is a must-read.

Richard Pringle, a dad from England, thought he'd have more time with his son, Hughie.

Hughie had a serious brain condition his doctors considered manageable. He was supposed to be fine.

Tragically, the odds struck for the worst and Hughie, 3 years old at the time, suffered a brain hemorrhage last year that he did not survive.

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The incredible story of baby Eva Grace: the superhero who never lived.

My wife Keri and I went in for the standard 19-week anatomy scan of our second child. As a parent, you think that appointment is all about finding out boy or girl, but it’s about a whole lot more.

In our case, our daughter was diagnosed with a rare birth defect called anencephaly — some 3 in 10,000 pregnancies rare. The phrase our doctor used in explaining it was "incompatible with life," which looks as terrible in words as it sounds. The child fails to develop the frontal lobe of the brain or the top of their skull. The chance of survival is 0%. We sat in a doctor’s office, five months before our daughter was to be born, knowing she would die.

The options weren’t great. There was (a) inducing early, which in effect was terminating the pregnancy or (b) continuing the pregnancy to full term.

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