Once the Air Had Cleared

Photo: Jean Graham

The crop dusters had just disappeared into the horizon, the roar of their motors replaced by the voices of my Amish neighbors. The Yutzy family sang a cappella in four-part harmony-- the men’s voices deep and resonant, the women high and tinkling--drifting over the cornfields.

Gott ist die Liebe, lässt mich erlösen,

Gott ist die Liebe, Er liebt auch mich.

My English neighbor Donna and I sat on her front step, listening to the Yutzys, their voices drifting toward us from the other side of the slope. Sound carries far in the country, and though we could not see them, we could clearly hear every note our neighbors sang.  We could imagine the family gathered around Bertha’s hospital bed that had been shoved close to the sliding door that looked out on the screened porch. Bertha’s long struggle with cancer was coming to an end.

            The Amish find a connection to the divine through song and a cappella singing. No instruments, no moving or processing about. No tears or emotive displays of sorrow.  Just the family singing, each holding a hymnal, circling the bed, giving their dying mother comfort to carry her into the next world.

            Donna and I sat in silence, knowing that we were experiencing a tragic, but sacred moment, a moment only meant for the family. At the same time, we were in a globally inclusive scene, each note floating in the clear air over the crops, a blessing to all living things, both flora and fauna, that would someday become one with the earth.

            In the past, I’d been privileged to hear the Amish sing at the bedside of their loved ones. Over a decade ago, the neighbor girl down the road was injured in a terrible accident. Lena and her brother were driving home in the cart when it began to rain. Her brother popped open their umbrella, and that was enough to spook the horse. Frantically fleeing the sound, the horse galloped down the lane, turning over the cart, the brother pitched out into the grass. Lena wasn’t so lucky. The neighborhood was warned she was in the hospital with just days to live.

            But she did live with a severe brain injury. The whole family gathered, praying and singing. After a few months, she was moved to a rehabilitation unit in Des Moines. I drove there to see her, and when I stepped into her room, her parents and eight siblings were circled around her bed, singing. Lena was still in a coma and unresponsive. Her brother had a pad of paper and a pencil and asked her to sign her name.

            “I know it looks hopeless,” her father told me in the hallway. “But the doctor told us to put her through the tasks of a normal day.”

            Then it was time to take Lena to physical therapy. “Come on, Mary,” her aunt said.

Photo by Bas Peperzak on Unsplash

            Her brothers pushed her hospital bed down the corridor to the PT unit. I trailed behind. In a large gym, once again, the family circled her bed, massaging her limbs, bending her elbows and knees, and improving her circulation. The singing commenced, filling the space, Lena unable to open her eyes. I tiptoed out of the room, loving the music and the connection, but feeling like the family was going through the motions of a cruel drama.

            After weeks that turned to months, Lena came back home, standing, then walking in a stiff manner, tilted to one side. Her parents worked with her in every way they knew how, taking her to more PT, massage, and acupuncture appointments. Slowly, her speech began to return. Then she could grasp objects with one hand. I went to see her every time I stopped in her aunt’s store. Finally, we were able to converse. Her boyfriend, who had stayed by her side throughout this ordeal, set a date for their wedding. This is a total miracle, I thought. Gott ist die Liebe. I couldn’t get the singing out of my mind.

            A few years after Lena’s wedding and the arrival of her first baby, another neighbor called me to take them to the hospital in town. Mervin, the grossdaddy, or grandpa, of the family was ailing, going downhill so fast that the doctor had hospitalized him, and once again, the whole neighborhood feared for the worst.

            I arrived at the family’s door, thinking that I would be taking his daughter and son-in law to the hospital, but the journey required three separate trips with a total of fifteen passengers carrying blankets, picnic baskets, and small infants in their arms.

            “Come along with us, Mary. You’ll want to say hello to Mervin,” his daughter told me on the last trip.

            In the hospital room, I found Mervin on oxygen, breathing heavily. No nurses nor aids were in sight. Chaos surrounded Mervin with a nursing mother in the bathroom, toddlers running across the floor, and adults making sandwiches and opening jars of homemade pickles on his nightstand. The whole family plopped down wherever they could find space and ate supper, pouring coffee from thermoses. Ice cream magically appeared in small cardboard cups.

            At last, the supper finished, the family gathered around Mervin’s bed, hymnals in hands, and sang, the room filling with the sound. A nurse opened the door and peeked in. Her eyes widened.

            “I am a traveling nurse,” she said between hymns. “And I knew that the Lord sent me to this hospital for a reason. I have never heard anything so beautiful.”

            A few days later, the family asked me to go to the hospital again. This time, to take Mervin home. He had improved enough to be discharged. He survived for five more years.

            Unfortunately, I don’t think Bertha is going to live. Iowa ranks #2 for cancer mortality. But on her front porch, Donna and I agreed that the music was especially soothing to the soul. In our English world, death is usually hidden away in hospices and nursing homes. The dying are often ghosted or shunned. We English tend to turn away from vulnerability.  And we get so enmeshed in the politics and pressures of our lives, we find it difficult to be present for someone else, even a loved one that we are about to lose.

 Here, in the Amish world, death is out in the open, surrounded by family and community. Here, death hovers just above the tips of the corn tassels, carrying the refrain:

Gott ist die Liebe, Er liebt auch mich.

Listen to the song and translation:

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