"Amazing Grace"

“Amazing Grace”1

In the southern state of Alabama, where the smell of bacon and the hum of “Amazing Grace” in the morning becomes as routine as brushing your teeth, there was a remarkable woman with the heart of an angel and the love of God in her blood.2

My Great Grandmother was a very religious person. She had a huge heart and the stories of a soldier who had survived near starvation during the depression and seeing family members die at her feet. She was the wisest person in our neighborhood despite only the completion of her third grade education. She was a hardheaded simple woman with the love from God and his angels running through her blood. 3

Her toughest battle begins with a fall down the steps and a stubbornness to avoid doctors. She hurt her arm in her three-step drop and assured everyone she would be just fine. She created a homemade sling and always refused pain killers to relieve her pain.  4

I was babysitting a friend of the family’s child the night of her paralyzing accident. I slept soundly while she lay in the floor of her apartment in her own vomit shaking uncontrollably during a stroke that would change her life. 5

The next morning I awoke, was shoved into a vehicle and carried to the Baptist Memorial hospital in Gadsden. I sat in a waiting room full of sobbing family members and the stench of Clorox and terrible hospital chocolate pudding. The doctors finally told us her journey to the massive stroke that almost caused her death. The fall had caused the blood from her arm to clot at the base of her brain. Her once beautiful white wavy hair had been half shaven where they had opened her skin to save her life. There was major damage to her brain. She couldn’t swallow, feed herself, and her mind had been reduced to that of a five year old. She was soon sent to rehab in Birmingham to learn how to talk, walk, eat, and think all over again. She was then moved to the nursing home of Boaz. 6

My mother and I took care of her while the rest of the family sold her belongings as if she were already dead. We visited with her almost everyday. I would color her pictures while we sang “I’ll Fly Away” and “Amazing Grace”. Despite all she had been through and what little mind she had left she always remembered all the words and that God still loved her. 7

My Grandmother decided one day, when the money was running out and patients were wearing thin throughout the family, that she would take Great Grandmother back to Memphis, Tennessee and take care of her at home. 8

I had been in band for a year the first time my mother and I went to visit her in Memphis. I played “Amazing Grace” on my clarinet as she sang along. She made me promise that when God chose to call her home I would play “Amazing Grace” as a final goodbye. 9

It was February 6, 1999; my great grandmother had been in the hospital for a week when we finally got the call that she had passed six days after my thirteenth birthday. I spent the two days she was carried to Gadsden from Memphis crying in the corner of my room with my teddy bear Fuzzy. Her viewing was held in a room with wood panels, mixed with tears and terrible green carpet. My pain ran so deep I shed no tears that night. As we left her viewing I was reminded by my mother my promise to her a little less than a year ago. 10

Walking to the car with my clarinet, I knew it was going to be a day I remembered the rest of my life. My mother stopped by Gadsden Music Company to buy new reeds for the performance of a lifetime. I soaked one reed in my mouth the rest of the hour drive as I stared blankly out the window. 11

Her funeral was held in the early afternoon. The sun was shining through the large oak trees surrounding the graveyard. A child, barely a teenager, stood beside a newly dug grave. With tears running down her cheeks she played the hymn of “Amazing Grace” for a woman who lived by the songs of God. That girl still lives in my memory and she is still playing “Amazing Grace” for a woman so few knew, but so many loved. 12