RSCM Report, Part Four: Laura

Two years ago at the Course, Laura was a proctor, a university student, and one of the leading trebles, a young woman akin to the ones I described in Part One of this Report. I clearly remember her and Lindsey, her friend, at the center of the senior girls in the Basilica, with our own Jennifer and Meredith in the group with them, singing the Stanford "Song of Wisdom" with that holy light in their eyes that I attempted to describe the other day as a characteristic of the Sisters of Cecilia. For the sake of the music and their friends, they were determined to do it right. And they did, with Laura right at the center of it.

That September, on the way home from study at the library, a drunk driver rammed into her car. She suffered many injuries, including massive skull and brain injuries, and she barely survived. The path since then has been hard for her, and equally hard for her parents and close friends. She has re-learned every basic activity of life, none of it coming easily.

I remember the photos of her in the ICU hospital bed, barely hanging on to life, with tubes and monitors in all directions. I remember pictures, many months later, of the first time she returned to her parish church, Weezer rolling her into the place in a wheelchair. I remember the photos of her first steps in physical therapy.

And I will never forget last summer's Course, when she came to some of the weeknight Evensongs and the Sunday services. At the final Evensong at Grace Church, I was located in such a way in the choir so that when I watched the conductor, Laura was right behind him with her mother, out in the congregation. She was obviously singing in her heart with us. I thanked God that she had advanced so far beyond what anyone had expected for her.

This year, she was at the Course as a full adult participant, along with her lifelong friend Lindsay (not to be confused with Lindsey, the other close friend mentioned above). Laura's accident has left her with aphasia, besides other problems that tax her strength and patience. She can sing, but she has great difficulty in processing words -- the choral texts as well as spoken instructions in rehearsal. I do not know how it is for her with music notation; it is likely that it is as difficult for her as written words. But she knows how to sing, and that survives. She loves music; she loves this Course and her friends who come to it.

The first rehearsal was a blur. Mr. Lole (the music director) took us through almost all of the music for the week at lightning speed, in order to get a sense of it. I cannot imagine how Laura got through it. There were times in rehearsals through the week when, looking at her from across the choir, I believe that she was entirely lost, without a clue as to what was being said, or what was to be done. But she persevered. Did she ever: to see her carefully puzzling out the notes and words of the "Hymn to St. Cecilia" as she was doing in one of the sectionals -- a piece she knew very well from at least one past Course -- was a study in perseverance. I thought of one of the Saints in the Calendar, Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky who faced a challenge akin to Laura's. Parkinson's Disease left him mostly paralyzed, but he completed his work of translating the Bible into Wenli, a dialect of Chinese, typing the final two thousand pages of it laboriously with the one finger of one hand which he could still move and somewhat control. He would find Laura a kindred spirit. She worked with equal intensity to sing with the choir this week; she has worked at many things with this sort of intensity for a long time now.

And she was a Presence. Often, she could not communicate with words. But she always communicated with gestures and smiles, expressing her continuing and obvious love both for her friends, and all of us, young and old, who sang with her.

On Sunday, she wore her red chorister's ribbon, reminder that she once sang as freely and beautifully as the girls I described the other day. Singing before the face of the LORD, surrounded by choristers and friends from little children and teenagers on up to the veterans of many summers, is as close to heaven as I will get in this mortal body. I suspect that it is the same for Laura, in her mortal body. For now, her song is tentative, much diminished from what it was, and she knows it. But it will not ever be so.

"O how glorious and resplendent,
fragile body, shalt thou be,
when endued with heav'nly beauty,
full of health, and strong, and free . . ."
(Hymn 621, "Light's abode, celestial Salem," which we sang to conclude Sunday Evensong)

The voice reflects the soul. It is as unique as a fingerprint, and as complete a revelation of the heart as anything in this life. It is likely to be even more so in the next, with all impurities washed away. Because of the deep waters through which she has come, Laura's voice will soar like an eagle.

"Now with gladness, now with courage,
bear the burden on thee laid,
that hereafter these thy labors
may with endless gifts be paid,
and in everlasting glory
thou with brightness be arrayed."