A Tribute Gma Hanna & Team Hoyt

A couple of weekends ago, M’s Gma H passed away after months of hospice in a nursing home in Kerrville, Texas. We were able to make a trip up there in June to see her, which was a huge blessing to us! She was thrilled to see all of us, but especially her son KW (M’s dad) and M, who spoke German to her, held her hand, and got her caught up to date about our family life in recent years and especially about his recent career change. At times during our visit, Gma H would sort of lose touch with the conversation and at one point even said, “Well, I don’t understand what you are saying. I don’t even know who you are!” It was difficult to see her this way, but she was lucid for the majority of the time and we were grateful to get to spend the time with her. (She was already in hospice care by this time, and we had a pretty good idea that this would be the last time we would ever see her.) During the last month of her life, Gma H went downhill quite significantly, refusing in the final week to eat or take her medication and did not even recognize her own daughter, who came to see her every day.

When she died, we drove up to Austin with M's parents to the funeral. The kids came with us and we gave them some serious warnings about keeping still and behaving during the ceremony. However, it was Dee and I that had a bit of a “dangerous” moment during the hymn singing. She was following along with me in the hymnal, when I mispronounced a word, which caused her to inadvertently laugh. I couldn’t resist a giggle, but that set her off again and I realized that we might not be able to rein it in before the singing stopped. I silently communicated to Dee that we had to sober up, and quick, and then used every ounce of my will to force myself to stop laughing. You ever have that happen to you? You’re in a situation where it is entirely inappropriate to laugh, and yet nearly impossible to stop laughing. (My big sis, B2, can testify with me on that – remember when we were in St. Paul’s cathedral in London and we got the giggles? It is a bad situation, very bad.) Anyway, within the next four lines of the hymn, we mercifully achieved solemnity once again, phew! M jokes that our marriage was in jeopardy there for a minute or two!

Anyway, after a sermon that included a nice synopsis of Grandma’s life (although it contained several inaccuracies), the pastor said, “We will now have a special music presentation.” From the back of the church, the slightly quavery voice of an older man started singing an a-cappella version of the popular Christian song, “I Can Only Imagine”. Near the end of the song, curiosity finally got the better of me and I turned my head around so I could see who was singing. It was Uncle R, M’s dad’s brother. Oh.

But I still didn’t get the real impact until he finished singing and said that Gma H always loved listening to inspirational songs on her CD player. On the day she died, she was listening to this song and when it was over she peacefully passed away. Oh! I wished I’d have known that before I heard the song, because it would have had more of an impact. Nevertheless, it was still pretty touching.

The day after Gma H’s funeral, we watched a video in church (see link below) – it is this totally inspiring story of a father/son marathon team. The son (Rick) has cerebral palsy and came home from school one day saying he wanted to run in a 5-mile race. Obviously, since the Rick was confined to a wheelchair, he by himself could not run the race, so his dad (who was not a runner) decided to run it, pushing his son’s wheelchair the entire way. That day, Rick said, “When we are competing, I just don’t feel handicapped”. Since then, they have together run over 900 races, including the Boston Marathon, triathlons and Iron Man competitions.

The neat thing was, the song they used in the background of the video was the same one R sang at Gma H’s funeral the previous day. As mentioned earlier, when I heard it sung that day, I thought it was nice, but didn’t know until the end who was singing it or its special significance. The emotions I didn’t experience at the funeral sure came to the fore at church – I was in tears along with everyone around me.

Enjoy…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryCTIigaloQ&mode=related&search=

For more information about the inspiring Team Hoyt, go to www.teamhoyt.com