It’s the strangest thing, because sometimes when I’m at church, I almost want to say, “We can sing these two hymns, but we can’t sing this other hymn.” Most of the hymns are merely the musical sounds of church, but there are a few of them that take me back to a different time.
My mother would play the piano and my sisters and brothers and I would sing together in harmony, standing around the piano, laughing and singing little extras that we created ourselves---our own little musical jokes to each other. Mom’s foot would move from the sustain pedal to the damper pedal on our old creaky piano. One year when we had mice in house, the mice had chewed through a few of the piano strings, so a few of the notes wouldn’t play. It didn’t matter. That piano meant so much to my mother, that often I’d fall asleep to the sound of her playing “Precious Jesus”. Mother taught me that when I was in a rotten mood, that I could actually sing myself back into a good mood.
Those were such fun times, I don’t understand what happens to me now. It is almost as if I feel pain when the congregation sings some of those old songs. I can hear my mother’s alto voice singing in my head and I can remember how she would sing the arrangement of music and my older sister would sing the tenor part in order that we could have more full harmony. I am reminded once again that I can never sing with my mother.
Maybe the pain I feel is shame because I didn’t appreciate those times and I didn’t realize how much those moments would mean to me later. I used to hate to hear the words, “It’s time for us to practice”, and now I wish more than anything that I could hear my mother’s voice ordering me to sing.
Anyway, I didn’t sing the song at church. I couldn’t. I didn’t want anybody to hear the “cry” in my voice. Maybe I am like those young happy couples who throw the wine glass into the fireplace proclaiming, “No other moment will be worthy enough to use these glasses”. I don’t feel right singing without my mother singing alto, and my older sister singing tenor, and my other sister complaining that she does not want to sing at all and is only humoring the rest of us. No other moment is as worthy to sing those songs as the moments created with my family. (Except for the return of Jesus himself)
I’m afraid I am beginning to learn one of the reasons that old ladies cry in church.
