Singing For The Seniors

One by one they came in to find their seats for our concert.

Some of them were leaning on walkers, shuffling carefully along in those little mobile cages, with the two wheels in front and hand brakes. Some of the walkers even had baskets, although I didn't see any with little bells or squeezey horns. In a sense, they were back to relying a sort of bicycle, like they probably did so many years ago. Only these bikes are (hopefully) a whole lot slower.

A few of them where in powered wheel chairs, gliding silently and triumphantly through the door and down the aisle, driving with their little joysticks and a look of satisfaction. Others were in the old style wheel chairs, this one helped by a uniformed assistant and that one by a younger relative there for a weekend visit.

But many of them were walking with canes or with no assistance
at all. It looked like they moved with some pain, though, and they
chose each step with care. Some of them bore bruises that were probably
the result of making some walking decision that did not entirely pan
out.

They were all members of an upscale retirement community,
paying to spend an hour on a beautiful springtime Sunday afternoon
listening to Kitty Donohoe and I sing some songs and tell some stories
about our work with Lost Voices. We were performing in their chapel, a
bright, beautiful room with a vaulted ceiling and amazing acoustics.
The altar had been moved aside, leaving us a perfect stage.

The
first lady arrived while I just getting the microphones out of the
bags, nearly an hour before the show was scheduled to start. She
carefully chose a spot a few seats in from the aisle in the third row
and sat patiently, smiling softly and adjusting her hearing aid as I
assembled the sound system, tuned the guitars and set all the sound
levels. Most of the other seats were full fifteen minutes early.

We opened the concert with a piece by Catie Curtis called Passing Through. My favorite part of the song is in the last verse:

If I can't change the world,
I'll change the world within my reach.
What better place to start
Than here and now with me and you?
We are only passing through.

 As
I sang that passage, I looked out at all the faces. Aside from the man
in the center of the second row who had dozed off while we were being
introduced, every face was rapt, deeply involved. One woman was nodding
in time, with tears in her eyes.

Kitty and I spent the rest of
our time on stage telling these people all about the group of
incarcerated kids who have shared with us brilliant glimpses into their
souls. We sang some songs written by those kids, songs about mean
streets, and bad decisions, and pain. Songs about relationships they
lost, or wished they had. Even songs about the hopes and aspirations
and courage  of people they would never meet.

All the while our audience tapped their feet and leaned into every word.

As
I watched these wonderful people, so gracefully nearing the end of
their own long journeys through this world, I found myself deeply 
moved by the way they were willing to connect emotionally with troubled
young men and women whose own roads had gone so wrong so early. Maybe
they saw shadows of their own children, or grandchildren, or even their
younger selves in the stories of the Lost Voices kids. Maybe they felt
fortunate that those shadows had never fallen across their paths.

And
maybe they were just willing to step out of their own challenges for a
while, to help us plant a few seeds for some trees under which none of
us may ever sit.

 

What I've Learned So Far... by Mike Ball is a syndicated feature distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group. If you enjoy this work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to