Singing to my father

Yesterday I had lunch with a couple of old best friends. We sat on a hot and sunny roof overlooking Boca Ciega Bay. The food was awful, mostly inedible fried stuff, but we revelled in the company.

My friend Ann told us a wonderful story. Her father, in his eighties, had come to town for the Thanksgiving holiday. While he was there he fell ill with dizziness and nausea so extreme that Ann took him to the emergency room at the local hospital. It took hours for anyone to see him. Finally, he was admitted, and it was unclear what was the matter. He was given some strong medicine for the nausea and this caused him to become disoriented and unable to speak. His Hands fluttered in front of his face. Ann was distraught.

She presented this story by first telling us that she had, as a young person,wanted to be a musician as was her father. We have always thought of Ann as a musician, so easily able to play the piano, accompany our school musicals. But she told us that she never persued music as a vocation because she did not want to perform in public and feared the judgement of a musical family. She said that she never sang in the presence of her dad.

There, in the hospital, sitting next to her father's bed, anxious and wanting to help, she decided to sing to her father, the first time in forty years. She began with "You are my Sunshine". Knowing Ann, I am sure she sang very quietly, as one sings a lullaby to a beloved. Her father quieted, and Ann kept on with the second verse.

And then, quietly, she began to hear another voice joining in from somewhere in the room, harmonizing with her good true voice. They sang four verses. The other voice said, "You are good. You can keep the melody with harmonizing. Let's go for "Red River Valley" And they did that, all the verses.

I think the angels were listening that night. Ann's dad is now fine, though the writing is on the wall that he may need to live in a more supportive place. Something special happened, one of those small amazing miracles that make us glad to be humans.

When I told my husband the story that night as we reported on our daily lives, both of us wept. I wish I could have been there.