Hymns by Heart

Like most Lutheran communities, the church I grew up in placed a particular emphasis on the musical aspect of worship. Lutherans’ musical roots run deep: Many of the great German composers, including Handel and Bach, were Lutheran, and our founder, Martin Luther, once wrote that “next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.” (In fact, Luther himself penned the de facto Lutheran theme song, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”) My mother’s side of the family is Lutheran through and through—her generation was the first to leave Missouri and marry outside of the German Lutheran community.

Attending church as a child, the hymns were the only part of the service that interested me, with the possible exception of communion (or, as I semi-blasphemously thought of it, “snacktime”). I was eventually able to sing harmonies, and even learned some choruses by heart; I developed a taste for the traditional hymns, and fostered a moderate level of contempt for more recent compositions. This was further encouraged by my mother, who instilled in me a particular disdain for modern pop-style worship music, or as she refers to it, “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend songs.” (No offense to those who enjoy and/or connect to God through Jesus-is-my-boyfriend music. It’s His place to judge you, not mine.)

I may have memorized a couple of choruses, but my mother, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, knows several entire hymns by heart. But even her grasp on the Lutheran musical canon pales in comparison to that of her own mother.

My mother’s mother, the minister’s wife, was in her eighties when I was born, and she died at the respectable age of 95 (my grandfather passed shortly before I was born). She lived in Missouri, so I didn’t see her often, and the majority of my memories from those visits revolve around such childhood delights as ice skating, a museum with a ball pit, and a place called “the Magic House,” which had a van de Graaff generator.

I have few specific memories of my grandmother herself, but I do remember the feeling of her presence. It was gentle and calming; she was extraordinarily kind and full of love, even as she developed Alzheimer’s disease and her health deteriorated. One of my specific memories of her involves going to church on a visit to Missouri. She held a hymnal, but she wasn’t looking at it. She knew every word to every hymn we sang. Even as the faces of her children slipped from her memory, even as she began to believe that her husband was alive and well again, she held on to each word of the hymns, songs she had been singing for nearly a century.

As my grandmother neared the end of her life, we moved her to a small assisted living home in California, close to my aunt. I visited her once there as well, and my mother and I sat with her and held her hands and sang hymns with her—“Beautiful Savior,” “Amazing Grace,” “A Mighty Fortress.” She still knew all the words, and sang along in a quiet, cracking voice.

Alzheimer’s runs in the family; my mother is almost certainly going to develop it eventually. It hurts to think that someday she might not know me, her only child. We sometimes talk about recognizing the right time to embrace death, rather than fighting it. My mother has told me that the “right time” for her is when music ceases to bring her joy. I hope and pray that she holds on to the hymns until her last day, just like her mother did.

—Leah C. Marsh ’19 is a Molecular and Cellular Biology concentrator in Quincy House.