This week I called my great grandma like I always strive to do. As usual, she didn’t keep me very long saying three minutes into the conversation, “well, everything’s good here”, and then me finding some way creative way to keep the conversation going even two minutes longer. But this time I could tell she was worse than the last. She sounded tired and her energy invested in the conversation was subpar. She told me multiple times that she didn’t like being in the nursing home and that she’s hopeful and excited to get back home soon. On top of that, there’s subtle things that you wouldn’t normally think of and yet pick up on when you converse with someone with dementia. In this conversation I could not deny to myself her condition at 92 years old.
Two Mays ago my uncle called me up around my birthday and said something along the lines of, “Noah, you know your grandmother’s health and memory isn’t as good as it once was and one day she won’t be around anymore. I’m not saying you have to call her every day, but maybe just once a week. I just don’t want you to have any regrets.” It took me several months to initiate the practices of calling and visiting, but once I did, I really grew to love my grandma much more and it was awesome to hear how much of an impact it had on her as well.
I have this thing where I strongly note the last time I saw a person before they passed away. Grampa Jim was at the 4th of July picnic. Grandma Hilde was in her kitchen as I was being rushed out the door to go home. Andrew was in passing at a friend’s graduation party. Mr. D was at my brother’s graduation party. I really hold onto these final moments and at the same time they often carry the majority of my relational regrets now that they’re gone.
Then about a year ago I was in the library doing homework while listening to Lauren Alaina’s album Sitting Pretty On The Top Of The World when I first heard “Getting Good”. I kid you not, that song caught me like a right hook and made me stop everything I was doing. As I cried and listened to the lyrics, I was ministered to in such a way that no secular song had before. At the time I was experiencing what I have come understand as anxiety for the first time in my life and in the middle of that burden “Getting Good’ just smacked me with pure wisdom. On the verge of legitimate adulthood, I could relate to what Lauren Alaina and Trisha Yearwood sang about—relationships, money, worries, a car, and loss.
The verse about loss has stuck with me the most. I know there have been calls with my grandma where I hung up and recognized the past five minutes as “the conversation my fear took” and that sucks so badly. But as heartbreaking as those regrets are, the beautiful thing is that “once I learn to soak up every moment, I’ll realize my life’s already good” and I don’t need to fear “what hasn’t happened yet but will someday”. Man, that’s powerful stuff. Gratitude is joy and joy is freedom.
So given the context of my grandma and I’s call this week, I held tightly to this song while we talked. And because I embraced the minutes we shared over the phone and the possibility that it could be our last conversation rather than attempting to brace myself for the day she passes, I could remember this final call and have no regrets. That is so freeing.
If you have not heard Getting Good yet, I would so very much encourage you to do that today. Find yourself a quiet place or put the headphones on and be ministered to by this song just the same as I have been. If you want to listen to more country music that’s about more than girls and beer, like and stream my If feeling country playlist on Spotify.