Billy

At sixteen, my guitar and I found a captive audience at the local community hospital, as I went room to room and miraculously, patients responded to my songs with smiles and laughter. One day Dr. Taylor directed me to Billy, a little ten year old boy battling Wilms’ Tumor, a childhood cancer that had grown out of control. I sang to him every day for two weeks, and we became pals. One day after school, I was bagging groceries at Paul Turner’s Food Market, and the hospital called the store asking me to come to the hospital as soon as possible. I jumped in my old Volkswagen Bug, and raced to the hospital. When I arrived, a nurse told me that Billy was struggling and needed me. As I opened the door to his room, I saw his mother holding one of his little hands, and his grandmother on the other side of the bed, holding the other one. They looked at me, moved away from the child, as I cupped my arm up under his little neck, then spoke to him. His big blue eyes opened, he smiled, and we locked eyes until my little buddy moved on to the next life. When I left the hospital that day, I was no longer a normal sixteen year old, I had gained first hand experience as to the power of giving yourself to others, and the soothing, medicinal power of music.