Notes from The Shrine 3: Let’s All Sing Some Songs

Late February 2024

“Where’s the broken wires at?” says Bob, apropos of nothing.  

We are sitting in the lunch room.  Me, my dad, Bob, Father V.  We are all drinking coffee. Bob is singing along with the music that’s playing.  Patsy Cline.  He is not quite singing the words but he is howling, slow crooning, lamenting.  

The song is “Baby, Baby.”  Once it ends he says, “Yeah!  Write something else!”

Lunch is grilled cheese, tomato soup, fries, and applesauce.  Nothing wrong with that.  My dad is eating well. Bob gets an extra sandwich but he hasn’t gotten through the first one yet. It’s a warm nursing home lunch room now gone quiet except for Patsy Cline singing “Always” one afternoon before the approach of some very bad weather.

The song ends and Bob exclaims, “Yes, indeed!”

Then he makes to get up from the table.  “Well, the wife is wonderin’ where I’m at,” he says, and my dad laughs.  

“I know she does,” Bob says, trailing off.  He doesn’t get up after all, stays seated.  He sits with his back to the wall, looking toward the wall of windows on the west-facing side of the lunchroom.  Bob’s problem is his sight.  He can still get around just fine, using his walker, but his vision is failing.

“Look at the clouds all the way out,” he says, “I think they’re going to be there a while.  I think we played football together.”

“Football?” I say.

“Well, we don’t have a quickball team,” he answers.  “Did you say a bird got you?  I don’t know.  I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore.  He got snapped twice.”

I don’t follow but I don’t say anything.  He’s talking and I’m listening, and my dad is listening, too, I guess.  I’m not sure what my dad thinks of me being so interested in what Bob has to say.

“If the weather is like this, we may get together on the roof and sing some songs,” Bob says.

“The roof?”

“Thank you Lord for the power to sing your songs, and for the nation you are attending,” he continues.  “Sing us songs for the people of the neighborhood to have this ability to sing the songs and to be able to do so for a while.  The songs of the Lord of the nations from day one until right now.  May we all sing and if you’re not able, then join in anyhow.”

Then he starts to sing a little, and taps his index fingers on the table, “Come out you with the song, and come out you with the melody, and we’ll all fall into it. And we know a little bit about what’s going on.  We’ll gather it all.  It can’t happen yesterday so we’ll take a little bit and tomorrow or the next day we’ll get another one.”

I’m just mesmerized, sipping the last of the lunch room coffee.  Then Bob really does get up to go, getting one hand then another on the arms of his walker.

“If you find a cup of coffee around here,” he says, “get me one.”

And then he walkers away, one extra grilled cheese left behind.