Grace Pennies

What’s a song lyric that has stuck with you forever?

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound…”

*

I found a penny again. It made me cry for a long while. Even as I write, tears stream.

Crying doesn’t seem all that graceful.

Still, it is.

There is often something to cry about when we listen inside. Crying until we laugh until we cry again.

Death does that. Life, too.

Alive, I feel my Dad’s songs and his presence on repeat. It’s the shivers down my spine and into my legs. It’s the well-worn and discolored pennies he leaves me on a walk outside.

“Be grace,” he sings. I listen. I write about listening.

I still feel his energy. I hear his song. The sound of him waking me every Sunday to donuts and the colored newspaper comics downstairs.

I wonder what my grace sounds like. What it will sound like tomorrow.

Is it a voice?

A song?

A call?

A feeling?

A vibration?

A low or high hum?

Are words required to convey the sound of grace? Being a mindful soul, I’d like to think not.

Maybe it’s as simple as one thought. A prayer. A state of gratitude for all beings, no matter the story they present in their reality.

*

Handing them

a ghost

penny.

*

It could even be the sound of another being that walks in the opposite direction. Someone who leaves. Someone who refuses to know me any longer.

A lost penny.

There is grace there. There is grief there too. Deep inside, there is this knowing that I’m not one to linger too long in the loss of another’s presence.

*

I write, “Friends?”

He doesn’t reply.

*

Another

lost

penny.

*

Still, the birds sing and soar. Funny thing, birds don’t fly backward.

I’ve tried walking backward. Marching backward around several blocks. Still, there was no going back to a time when grace seemed unnecessary.

So, yes. “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound…” remains the song I will remember for all of my time. Pretty certain my Mom sang it in utero.

Thanks a lot, Mom and Dad Bird. Your lyrics and the sound of your voices remain ever present in my life.

We feel each other’s grace. It’s amazing. I hope I never forget to forget anyone else’s “wrongs.”

*

“We’ll be friends until we are old and senile, then we’ll be ~ new friends!”