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How Ordinary Lives Create Extraordinary Good
Grandma Vera wasn’t much taller than the organ she loved to play that sat in her living room. Grandma seated at the organ is a recurrent childhood memory.
She’d been playing the organ since she was a young girl, and even as an adult her hands were so small she had to stretch to reach the chords she loved. She played the organ at home all the time, but it was her service in her church that is a hallmark of her life.
Over the years, her music became the soundtrack of people’s grief and remembrance. I think the final count was seventy-two funerals. Seventy-two families that wept while she played, her music sustaining them in their loss. She never asked for thanks. She just showed up, sat down, and played.
Cancer finally took Grandma’s ability to play, but not before her final arrangement. At her own funeral, her recorded sounds played for the seventy-third time.
My grandma was never famous. She never really even sought recognition. Yet thousands of people left those funerals feeling comfort, peace, or just the warmth of grandma’s gift as she sat behind the organ.
For some time before she passed away, I had the privilege of living with Grandpa Tom and Grandma Vera. They, like their son (my dad), are some of my heroes.
