Twelve Years Ago

On a Thursday in early November 1995, my 73-year-old Great-Aunt Rose was coming home from a physical where she had been given a clean bill of health. She and Uncle Joe talked on the way home from the doctor's office about how blessed they were to be in such good health at their age. Friday night, she was awakened by chest pain. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital where they performed emergency open-heart surgery. She came out of the surgery just fine, but then on Saturday afternoon her heart stopped and they could not do anything to make it start again.

I should mention that was very pregnant with my second child at the time. Her son asked me to sing her favorite hymn, "How Great Thou Art" for the funeral service. I sang just fine until the last verse:

When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!
Then I shall bow in humble adoration,
And there proclaim, "My God, how great thou art!"

Thinking about Aunt Rose doing that very thing was just too much for my very pregnantly hormonal self and I could not manage to even squeak out the last chorus. Fortunately the organist had some experience playing for funerals and had told me ahead of time that she would keep playing no matter what, so it wasn't a total disaster.

This weekend, on the very anniversary of Aunt Rose's passing, we're singing "How Great Thou Art" at Mass. I believe with my whole heart that Aunt Rose will be there, in that great cloud of witnesses, to hear me sing her favorite hymn and together we will proclaim, "My God, how great thou art!"