Play for the old home ward

Late this summer I went to the funeral of a dear friend’s mom. Afterwards, I stopped by my parent’s house, and I said, “Mom, don’t expect me to sing at your funeral”. My mom is nowhere near needing to have a funeral, by the way. She and Dad are still doing well and are very healthy, but when they are still healthy is the time to discuss this stuff.

“What?” she said, “but I was planning on having you girls sing something, maybe have Lori-Kay play the flute.”
“It’s just rude to ask someone to sing when they have just lost their mom. Or their grandma.”

She just looked at me like I was weird (I get that look a lot).

“I have an idea, Mom. If you want a musical number, how about we do something while you are ALIVE to be able to hear it.” And then I had an idea. “How about I get a group together and we play something on the bells?”

So I asked my friend Liz, who also group up in the Butler 8the ward, and her parents are still in that ward, if she would like to play a small group number in the home ward. We found a song, found a date, and found a couple other people from our bell group who could do it, and made a plan. Of course, two of the 5 ended up dropping out because they had other things going on on that date, but we were able to find others to fill in. A few practices before our regular rehearsal and we were ready. So, on Wednesday night, I borrowed our director’s bells (just two of the boxes), and hauled them to the car after rehearsal. Hauling the bells in the worst part of one of these things.

This morning, we all met at my parent’s ward, rehearsed a bit before the meeting, and then were ready to go.

My parent’s ward has not changed much in the 22 years since I got married. People get older. Some people have died and a few people have moved away, a few younger families have moved in, but not a lot. During sacrament meeting, it was SO QUIET. Wow. Compared to my ward, it was like silence. And sparse. The whole middle section was almost empty when the meeting started. I’m not sure why their ward is dwindling. If I were to come back to my current ward (where we’ve lived for 13 years now and in that time it’s split twice) in twenty years, I doubt I would recognize as many people. But people in my parent’s generation tend to move less, I guess. They raise their family and stay in the same house.

It was fun to see so many people I know and recognize from my youth. Some I am friends with on facebook (yes, my home ward has a facebook page), and some I see when I visit my parents. Some I had to really think about to remember who they were, since they have aged 20 years from my memories, and one lady I didn’t remember at all (she seemed to remember me), but it was nice to be back.

The comments were all so nice and they really appreciated that we could come and play for them. It was a special experience for me (and for Liz). I’m grateful for my musical friends that they would give of their time and talents to help us perform something like this.