Who Knows What you Might Do? I was living in one of those anonymous walk up apartment buildings that dot New York’s East Side and didn’t know any of my neighbors. Determined to be a singer I was putting almost all the money from my daytime job into singing lessons. Lessons meant practice—and I devoted every spare moment to scales and songs. One morning I met one of my neighbors on the stairs as I was dashing to work. I was humming a song I had just been working on. She looked at me a moment, then asked, hesitantly ”Are you the girl who sings all the time?” A few evenings later I was turning over in my mind my desperate musical ambition. Was I foolish to continue? Almost panicky, I grabbed at a piece of music. It was Albert Hay’s beautiful setting of The Lord’s Prayer. My courage returned. Jubilantly I stood in the middle of the room and sang it with a full heart. I must have sung it five or six times. Several days later I heard a rattle at my door, and turned to see a note being slipped under it. It read: Dear Neighbor, If you ever feel discouraged, perhaps this will hearten you. Things have been going badly for me—so badly I didn’t want to live any longer. When I’d hear you practicing I’d snap out of it a little, because you sounded as though you had something to live for. Finally the other night I decided to end my life. I went into the kitchen and turned on the gas. Then I heard you singing . It was the Lord’s Prayer. Suddenly I realized what I was doing. I turned off the gas, opened the windows and drank in the fresh air. You sang that song several times. Well—you saved my life. You gave me the courage to make a decision I should have made long ago. Now life is all I could hope it to be. Thanks always." (by Mary Coburn, NY,NY in Life in the United States, Readers Digest, somewhere in the 1950’s)
|
|---|