My Fellow Sentients,
Okay, on Friday night, as part of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, I saw a documentary so sublime it made me weep. "Amazing Grace" was directed by local writer/filmmaker Lynn Montgomery about a young woman, Grace Fisher who, on 2014's winter solstice and her 17th birthday, moments before her friends were all to gather for her party, suddenly succumbed to the neurological disease, Acute Flaccid Myelitis, becoming only the 101st known case of the extremely rare, polio-like illness. And by the next morning of that obviously longest night of the year, Grace awoke a quadriplegic.
Now, the story could well have ended there but for the fact that Grace was/is a musical prodigy, and even though she no longer could play piano or cello or her beloved guitar, her musical gift was undiminished, and arguably even amplified. Now in the College of Creative Studies at UCSB, the insuppressible Grace has written three breathtaking symphonic compositions, and is assuredly on pace to join the pantheon of musical geniuses.
There is one scene in the film that, for me, really underscores just how frail life is. It shows Grace's mom, Debbie, replacing Grace's trach tube. Although this is a monthly routine for them, for those few seconds Grace has to place total trust in her mom (and who better than a mom?) to complete the procedure, for if mom fails daughter dies. It's a heart-wrenching moment within a heart-warming film!
certainly,
Robert