August 14, 2026
When I arrived at my parents home today, I could hear Opera playing and mother’s voice singing as I was walking up the front path. Mom had already finished her breakfast and was coloring and singing along to the music. There was something so beautiful about the scene—Mom, her coloring, her music, and her voice joining in wherever it could.
Music therapy has become the invisible stepping stones that somehow extend our footing, helping us draw closer to Mom. Music creates a path to places that words can no longer reach.
And the closer Mom draws to the Lord, the more visible it becomes in the ways she communicates through her worship.
I believe the Lord knew that Mom’s life on earth would meet grief at an early age. She lost her older sister, Marianne and best friend at the tender age of 12. She lost her father two weeks before graduating from high school at the age of 18. God knew that there would be tears she would have to carry long before she was ready to carry them. And He placed such a deep anointing on her gift of song.
He gave her a voice that could take sorrow and transform it into worship.
Her tears could become a song.
Her grief could become a melody.
Her pain could be lifted heavenward through the very gift He had placed inside her. Especially after she lost our older sister, and her beautiful daughter, Marianne, named affectionately after her own sister.
Growing up, hearing Mom sing was as normal as hearing the walls breathe around us. Her voice filled our home, and those songs became part of who we were. But I understand that gift differently now. I see that her singing was never simply a talent. It was an anointing—a grace God placed upon her because He knew the road she would walk.
And what amazes me most is that the anointing did not end with her.
It was passed to our older sister, Marianne.
And then to her daughters, Holly and Ashley.
And to my younger sister, Melanie, and brother Daniel.
The Lord has allowed the song to keep traveling through our family, from one generation to the next.
Holly’s voice carries something that I believe Mom would recognize—not just as a familiar sound, but as something that came from within their shared bloodline, their shared love, and the same spiritual inheritance.
I think about the day when Holly and Ashley sang over her own mother as she was making her passage to Heaven. What a beautiful mercy that must have been—to have a voice Marianne would recognize surrounding her in those final moments. A voice of her children carrying the echo of her own gift, now being given back to her in love.
And then there is Melanie, who can still lift an entire room when she releases her vocals. Daniel plays multiple instruments, and writes his own music. He can sit at a piano and after checking the tune, can play just about anything.
The same gift.
The same thread.
The same beautiful gift from God allowing the seed that was planted in Mom to bear fruit and continue through her daughters, son and grandchildren.
Then, in one of those unexpected, and sacred moments today, Mom looked up at me and called me by my name.
“Martha.”
She said it three times.
I’ve stopped asking her, “What’s my name?”. I am happy, simply being her,—being the person who sits beside her, helps Dad care for her, loves her, and nobly walks this road with her.
But when she looked directly at me and said, “Martha,” something happened in my heart.
For that moment, I know she found me.
Or maybe I should say that, in that moment, she found me reaching for her—and she pulled me in.
The Lord’s Prayer was one of Mom’s favorites. There was a time when she could bring an entire room to tears with the beauty of her voice. Her voice is weaker now. It no longer has the strength to find all the notes she once could. But she still knows the tempo. She still knows the words. And sometimes, even when she cannot vocalize them anymore, she can whisper them.
Today, we played The Lord’s Prayer for her.
For a moment, she was there—singing a duet with Jackie Evancho, the child prodigy opera singer who was discovered at just ten years old.
Those melodies are more than music to me. They are part of the soundtrack of our family.
And that is why this moment is so sacred.
Because even as dementia takes pieces of Mom’s memory, it cannot take away the songs her heart knows.
The music reaches places that memory cannot.
The worship reaches places that words cannot.
The heart and soul remembers what the mind can no longer hold.
Today, as Mom whispered and sang along, I thought about the tears she once transformed into song. I thought about the anointing God placed upon her life, knowing the grief she would encounter.
And I realized that the song was never just Mom’s.
It was something God entrusted to our family.
A song that would carry grief.
A song that would carry love.
A song that would carry faith.
A song that would carry us all the way home.
And now, as Mom’s earthly voice grows quieter, the voices of those who came after her can sing over her.
That is one of the greatest gifts of all.
And now we get to sing it back to her.
