A Deeper Well

When I first moved to Nashville and away from my friends and family, virtually alone for the months before I began to make new friends, I decided to figure out some of the things I truly, of my own desire, liked. Not things I liked because it was what I was exposed to at home, or liked because it was what a lot of my friends were into, but just what I liked. I am easily swayed by the masses, so while I had some general dislikes, there was a lot of gray area that just fell into the category of “sure, I like it all right.”

So I rented movies and listened to music and read books--and refused to get anyone else’s opinion about any of it until I formed an opinion myself. I took a new look at things both obvious and relatively obscure. And I discovered the types of music I could get lost in, some authors who change the way I think about things, and some wonderful movies--as well as some genuinely boring movies, some songs I didn’t feel anything in, and some books that I didn’t even bother to finish.

And it felt freeing. It felt nice not to take anyone else’s opinion into consideration. And once I found a few things I discovered I genuinely liked, I found similar artists and works and tried those out as well. And I liked finding things that were truly me, rather than me trying to fit a certain mold--a Franklinton mold, an all-things-obviously-and-only-Christian mold, whatever.

During that time, one of the albums I discovered that I truly liked was Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball. I loved the haunting sound of the music, her beautiful voice, the ache in those words. I kept it in my CD player for weeks, and during one day of one of those weeks my Grandma’s health took a serious turn. She had suffered a stroke long before that, and had not really been herself for a while, but now we found she was dying.

In the course of the few weeks left of her life I listened to that album countless times. I listened to its songs of death and heartache and longing for another world--a world beyond our flesh and blood and pain. And it all seemed a fitting accompaniment for those last days. In life she had been a creative spirit--a painter, quilter, knitter, poetry-lover. She had been a Christian who meant it--who loved unconditionally and took care of people. She had been a baby-sitter when I was sick, she came to all my dance recitals, she gave me five dollars as Fair money every October, she made biscuits without measuring anything, and she always reached her arms out to hug me when I walked in the door--even when I was a rather sullen teen who wasn’t terribly easy to love. And though she was now somewhat changed from the way we had known her, I knew somewhere inside her, she still longed for what those songs spoke of--the body made whole, the world away from pain.

When she did pass away from this world, I drove down to Franklinton for the funeral. Alone in my car I listened to the album again, and I remembered her the way she was and now would be again.

During my lunch hour yesterday I took a walk along the streets of Nashville, where people were streaming in for a music festival in town this week, and as a car with its windows rolled down sat at a red light, I heard two lines from that album filter out into the day:

Found I had a thirst that I could not quell
Lookin' for the water from a deeper well

And though she died years ago, I’m there again, remembering the childhood my Grandma was such a part of, wondering at what lies beyond this world.