Song for a Saint

Before you read this post, I need you to follow this link or copy-paste it, whatever it takes to open this page.  Listen to it as you read.  If you finish before the song is done, close your eyes and let it play out.  If it ends before you've read everything, play it again and keep reading.  Thank you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUgoBb8m1eE



Ever since I started doing anything, my grandparents always loved to see me do it.  Sports, musical instruments, that awesome Lego spaceship I made; the list goes on.  I'd play instruments once in a while for special occasions, but that never seemed to be quite enough for one of the grandparents.  I can't remember anything that got my Grandma Bierma quite as excited as wanting to hear me play my saxophone.  I was always quite reluctant to do so, though, and didn't end up doing it very much at all.  She'd come to my concerts when she could, but she kept getting older and eventually, attendance was no longer possible.  With this came regular reminders that she would love to hear me play my saxophone again.
     Back in high school, I was much more serious and interested in playing guitar, but that didn't come up very often compared to the saxophone requests.  I could never figure out why, because the guitar seemed so much more exciting than a slightly-revved up version of a hymn played on the saxophone.  Nevertheless, she persisted; she didn't ask every time I saw her, but I could figure every couple months that somehow the topic would come up.  And I would always say that maybe I'd do it sometime, that maybe I'd come up with a song or two to play for her.  I intended to do it, but I never really put any effort into it.
     She continued to age, and I still didn't play for her.  I don't know why I couldn't take the time to show up at her room for 15 measly minutes to play her even the easiest song on saxophone, knowing that would be enough for her.  I wish I would have given it a little more effort, to spend some time with her and bring a remarkable amount of joy to her day and receive from her an undeserved amount of praise for my talent.  But I never did.  I meant to, but I never did.
     Last year, during band tour during the end of Christmas break, she got pneumonia and was sent to the hospital.  She'd been declining for the last ten years, the way people do when they've lived 90 years.  This wasn't the first time my parents had told me that she might not live past the week, so I again braced myself for what might happen and proceeded with life.  Her condition worsened as I returned, and I spent the week receiving updates from my mom about Grandma's state.  This time it seemed she was reaching the end of her time here.
    Friday morning, January 15, I woke up to news that Henrietta Bierma packed up and headed home during the night.  Sorrow and relief mingled, knowing that my grandmother wasn't with us anymore, but was free from breathing tubes and walkers and medication and the myriad of pains and problems she'd been pressing on through for over a decade.  We couldn't visit her every Sunday after church and answer the usual questions about how our week went and what we were doing in school, but we didn't have to listen to her scratchy voice aching for healing.  We couldn't host our family gatherings at her nursing home anymore, but we didn't have to watch her hobble and shake or be pushed in a wheel chair longing for strength again. She was home.
      The day she died, I was supposed to play in our concert band's tour homecoming concert at Dordt.  I could have skipped, but I didn't see any reason to miss it.  I showed up and went through the concert routines as usual, thinking it just another concert, except with a little heavier heart.  However, as we moved through the repetoire, we came upon Elgar's Nimrod from the Enigma variations, and in that instant I knew that this song meant something much more than it did when I played it in rehearsal the day before.  I always liked the piece, but tonight, each phrase, each elementary quarter-note expression, so simple yet something she still would have loved to hear coming from my instrument, rose up from the stage.  I remembered my promises to play for her, and poured my heart into each note to make up for her almost-deaf ears dying without hearing me play for her.  The piece built and built, culminating in a climax worthy of heaven's choirs.  The final crescendo to the peak chord shot heavenward from out of the roof of the auditorium, and in that moment, I knew, I wholeheartedly believed that my grandmother listened with uninhibited ears and rejoiced at the sound as she left this world.  I didn't play my saxophone for my grandma while she lived, but as ascended to heaven's glory,  I played for her.