For many people, music has a way of pulling long-lost memories to the surface in an instant. That happened to me recently. Even though I hadn’t heard the song in more than 20 years, the lyrics slipped through my lips as easily as they had when I was 13. I smiled instinctively, then, almost as suddenly, the smile faded as a wave of old grief washed over me.
I stood frozen, listening to the familiar words:
Every night I pray
I’ll have you here someday,
I’ll count the stars tonight
And hope with all my might,
And when I close my eyes
You’ll be right by my side.
This song is the soundtrack to my very first love story.
Now, I know what you’re thinking—thirteen seems a little young for a love story. But this isn’t the kind you’re expecting.
It was three days after Christmas, 1996. I was visiting my older brother a couple of hours away. He lived there with his wife and baby boy. I can’t remember much else from that trip. Just one moment that would change everything.
It was a Sunday morning and we were all getting ready for church when the phone rang. My brother answered it and his face instantly grew pale. He hung up 10 seconds later.
“That was dad. Mom is at the hospital. She had a stroke.”
I smiled. Yes, you read that right. This is humiliating for me to admit, but I remember it vividly. I smiled. And only recently did I learn that smiling is actually a coping mechanism. Weird, I know. I promise I wasn’t happy about it. But my smile quickly faded as I became more confused. I didn’t even know what a stroke was.
The next thing I knew, we were all driving up north to the hospital. Hesitantly, I entered the hospital room and saw my mom. I walked over to her and said hi. She muttered something to me using half of her mouth.
“What?” I asked.
“You. Need. To. Go. To. Church,” she slowly slurred.
Classic Mom. I looked at her like she was out of her mind.
“I’m not going to church,” I said firmly.
You hear about people—young and old—having “mini-strokes” and bouncing back in days or weeks. My mom didn’t have one of those. Hers was massive. She spent an entire month in that hospital bed, followed by months of physical therapy, learning to walk again while half her body refused to cooperate.
That Christmas, just days earlier, I had gotten my very first CD: the soundtrack to That Thing You Do! (If you haven’t seen the movie, go find it immediately.)
My mom was the epitome of a homemaker, raising seven kids, cooking two hot breakfasts every day (one for the early risers, one for the younger kids), running countless loads of laundry, making chore charts, and turning our house into a home. That stroke, to my 13-year-old self, seemed to rip away every ounce of comfort and security I had known.
When I wasn’t visiting her in the hospital, I would curl up on her bed and smell her pillow while listening to my dad quietly weep. And these are the words that would play through my head:
Any waking hour it seems
I only have you in my dreams.
So every night I’ll pray
I’ll have you here one day,
I’ll count the stars tonight
And hope with all my might,
That when I close my eyes
You’ll be right by my side.
Helping my mom walk up and down stairs, chop vegetables, and put her shoes on became my new normal. Prior to her stroke, I would roll my eyes every time she asked me to do a chore or to fetch her something from the basement. But my attitude shifted the instant my world changed.
Charity is the pure love of Christ, and my relationship with my mom was the first time I truly experienced that love. She was my first love story and even better than the soundtrack to That Thing You Do! is the gift I’ve had to love and serve her every day since.
One Response
This story brought tears to my eyes. Your mom is lucky to have you! So sorry you experienced this at such young age, but I’m glad you see the positive lessons you learned from it.