Sing, Becky, sing

This blog lost a friend recently.

Cindy’s sister, Becky, used to shoot me occasional emails and Facebook comments about the silliness I sometimes post here. 

She also mentioned to Cindy a compliment that any writer covets … “You know, Cindy, he has a real voice.”

I took that praise seriously, for Becky was a voracious reader and extremely literate. 

Was … because Becky passed away suddenly from a stroke several weeks ago.   Her last note to me was a congrats on my birthday and best wishes regarding the arrival of our new dog Nellie.

“Happy birthday, Doug!  I am really glad you married into the family that ‘had brains once!’  Enjoy your day and your ‘present’ that will arrive next weekend!”

The “brains once” refers to a morning kitchen-table discussion that I’d had with mother-in-law June about different kinds of odd foods we’d eaten.

At one point, June proclaimed proudly: “I had brains once!” 

I shot coffee out my nose.

That was Becky … always appreciative of a good joke.  We shared many over the years. 

The memorial service was held in Springfield, Ill., where Cindy and I first met. 

The Porters were an institution in Springfield … well loved and active in the community.  While Cindy and brother Tom had moved to other parts of the country, Becky kept her roots nearby, in Ashland, where she raised four children.  So the turnout for the service was heavy.

Besides being a mom, one of her favorite past-times was shape-note singing, also called Harp singing, at New Salem State Park.  New Salem was Abe Lincoln’s home as a young man.

Legend has it that Abe and his early love, Ann Rutledge, sang out of a shape-note tunebook at the Rutledge Tavern in New Salem.

The photo's scratchy, but here are the singers, Becky at left, front.

True or not, there’s decent evidence that shape-note singing was common throughout the county in Lincoln’s time.  And so Becky and others would gather occasionally to sing as their forebears did.

Before we even walked through the church door for the service, we could hear the Harpists inside.  Becky’s shape-note friends had gathered to honor her with song.  They sat up front, in the choir area, facing each other in a circle.   They held their oblong tunebooks and sang forcefully for 30 minutes in four-part harmonies, intentionally rough – as rough as the rails that Lincoln used to split – because that’s the nature of shape-note singing.

Retired Springfield College teacher Peter Ellertsen once wrote:

Traditional Harp singing strikes those who hear it as powerful, stark and moving. And loud. Harp singers glory in it. Folksong collector Alan Lomax, who heard a lot of it, once said the "hard, pure voices" of country shape-note singers sounded like "a cross between a steam calliope and a Ukrainian peasant choir." It has the full-throated ornamentation of the Anglo-Celtic tradition, and it has a rough-hewn integrity all its own.

Here's an audio example of shape-note singing ... this one recorded in Alabama in 1979.

During the memorial service, more than one person spoke of Becky’s love of the singing, and how it was identical to her own personality and values:  Honest, forthright, spiritual, strong, with a hard edge born of love and knowledge and, yes, wit.

But as much as Becky loved singing, I think she loved reading more.  One of Cindy’s best memories of Becky growing up was the time Becky read Edgar Allen Poe stories to Cindy.  Poe had a fascination for a lot of us growing up then because of his portrayal of our darker side.

Edgar Allen Poe

I’m sure that’s what captivated Becky, who always appreciated a good thriller … and a chance to scare her little sister.  Interestingly, and not surprisingly, that same appreciation for mystery and intrigue spread to Cindy as well.    

So when Cindy drove to Springfield to see Becky in the hospital, she came equipped with a selection of Poe.  Not that Becky could hear … the doctors said there was no hope of that.  Her brain had essentially stopped. 

But Cindy felt the need, and so she sat by Becky’s bed and read out loud … to return the favor.  And the words floated from her room, down the hallway, so that even the nurses could listen.

“It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain,” Cindy read, the passage  from the Tell-Tale Heart.  “But once conceived, it haunted me day and night ….”

I like to think that somehow, some way, Becky heard Cindy’s story-telling. 

Just as I think she could hear her friends’ forceful voices in church that day.

God’s speed, Becky.  Cindy and I both thank you for being the good Big Sister.

Thank you, too, for your love of the written word.  

And now … sing on, with strength and joy.