Anniversaries should still be celebrated

May 14, 1960, in the early morning hours between midnight and daylight, my daddy (Harold Whitten Motte, Sr.) died of a heart attack the week before he was scheduled to have open heart surgery at the Medical College Hospital in Charleston, SC (now part of the Medical University of South Carolina). I was a high school junior and had been to the Junior-Senior Prom at McClenaghan High School. I came home, went in to kiss him goodnight and never saw him alive again.

I usually just mark the date in my mind when I recognize it on the calendar. I haven't actually been to my parents gravesites in some time, never taking flowers for their graves, as I have been doing for Tim's. (Actually I took some bright yellow flowers out to his grave this afternoon; yes, yellow. I actually found a baby yellow begonia for the house last weekend, too.)

I have never thought of my parents as being at the cemetery... until Tim died I had always thought of them as being far, far away in some blurry expanse of clouds, doing something peaceful and restful. And dull and boring.

Mother died in 1970 so daddy was already there, maybe getting a home ready for them to share, I thought. What else was there for him to do? I had no idea. Now I realize that they are both very busy with work assignments and learning opportunities, and also enjoying music, praise and worship as they did here on earth.

Oh yes, I'm sure they're participating in music somehow. "Daddy sang bass, Mama sang tenor, me and little brother would join right in there," the old song goes. I'm not sure if daddy really sang bass, but he played a banjo and sang with a barbershop quartet off and on.

I don't remember ever hearing mama sing but she did love music. After he died she taught herself to play the piano, playing a variety of hymns for her own enjoyment. She taught a children's Sunday School class and loved to teach the little kids some gospel songs and choruses, so I guess she must have had to sing them herself. I bet she continued practicing in heaven, playing the piano while daddy plays banjo - or some new instruments they have discovered along the way. And I bet Tim plays his French horn or sings right along with them.

Imagine all the instruments ever invented throughout all of human history, plus some still yet to be discovered here on earth, all being used to glorify God. Not all played at once, but in combinations small or large, glorious melodies and harmonies. I don't believe all music in heaven is necessarily religious but it must certainly all be wonderful. Love songs. Folk tunes. Maybe even beach music, that would be a blast!

Some weeks back I had a mental image of a great pipe organ with pipes of crystal, not metal, and I could almost hear that sound. The depth and height of those octaves can't be duplicated on earth! I played a big pipe organ for some years, and I still get a thrill from hearing those deep rumbling bass pipes and the high, high flutes.

This week I had a mini-vision of a different kind of piano among all the musical instruments in heaven. Instead of the soundboard and strings being encased in a wooden box, these strings were completely exposed in a large separate frame. There were far more octaves than on my Baldwin Acrosonic. The player sat in front of the keyboard facing this great frame of strings across a short distance, maybe a few yards. As a key was pressed, a grouping of strings for that note was struck by the hammer. It was still a piano sound, but what a sound! It makes me want to find an inventor and have him construct one for me, here and now.

This past week as I realized it was the 47th anniversary of daddy's death, instead of visualizing a boring, cloudy expanse, I visualized daddy, mama and Tim in a noisy concert hall full of fun and laughter, music and melody, where fabulous pianos, crystal pipe organs, gold and silver French horns and every other imaginable and unimaginable instrument is being put to good use. Think what those rehearsals must be like!

So I celebrated that date a little differently this year, entering into their marvelous musical joy and excitement. As I'm sure you can tell, I no longer think of heaven as a dull and boring place.