The Last Song Margaret Ever Sang

Margaret Ellison was eighty-three when the hospice nurse told her family to gather. Her lungs were failing. Her body was shutting down. But when her grandson Daniel knelt beside her bed that Tuesday morning in their farmhouse outside Topeka, she wasn't weeping. She was humming.

"Grammy, are you scared?" Daniel whispered.

She opened her eyes — still sharp, still bright — and squeezed his hand. "Scared of what, sweetheart? I've been reading Paul's letter to the Corinthians all week. Death had a stinger once, but Jesus pulled it out on Easter morning. What's a bee without its stinger? Just buzzing."

She asked them to sing. So there in that small bedroom with the yellow curtains, her daughter, her son-in-law, and three grandchildren sang Amazing Grace while Margaret mouthed the words. When they reached "when we've been there ten thousand years," her lips stopped moving. But she was smiling.