My granddaughter Gloria Delphine Endermann wriggled her way into our hearts from the very beginning. We loved her tender spirit. We loved her precocity. She knew words way beyond her three years. She had a special way of pronouncing multi-syllable words, having to enunciate every syllable. “Av-o-ca-do,” “En-der-mann,” “des-tin-a-tion.”
“Could you sing me the silver song?” she would ask her mother when it was time for bed. And so my daughter Joanna would sing to Gloria her favorite song.
Lord, you are more precious than silver,
Lord you are more costly than gold,
Lord you are more beautiful than diamonds,
Nothing I desire compares with you.
During that time, I was teaching a class of third and fourth graders at my church. The children didn’t seem to realize that I possessed a college degree that said I knew how to teach them. Instead of listening to my pearls of wisdom, they ran about the classroom, bouncing off the walls. In desperation, I told Gloria about the “children’s problem.” She listened intently until I summed up what I felt was the bottom line.
“They don’t have any attention span, Gloria. Do you know what attention span is?”
“No,” she innocently replied.
I explained the concept of attention span as best I could to a three-year old. When I was finished, she looked at me and replied, “We can listen longer if you tell us a story.”
A light went on in me. I prepared a story for the children that would cover the lesson for our next class. When I entered the room, they were doing their customary wall bouncing. Instead of yelling, I just started into my story. Immediately I heard “shhhh” from several of the children. Within thirty seconds all were sitting before me, their eyes glued forward, listening with rapt interest.
The next day I told Gloria. “You taught me something I will never forget. I will be a story teller.”
Seventeen days later I went to a nearby beach with a daughter-in-law, along with Gloria and her older brother Daniel. Gloria and I built a sand castle together, pretending we had to protect the people inside from the ocean waves that continually threatened the castle. When it was time for us to leave, Gloria stood to her feet and stomped out our engineering masterpiece. At the parking lot I said goodbye to her and to my daughter-in-law, at whose home she was to spend the night. I took her brother Daniel back to his home myself.
The next day the telephone rang. “Gloria has had an accident,” her father informed me. “She’s been half drowned in a Jacuzzi. She’s at the Children’s Hospital. We don’t know if she will live.”
To say that I felt blindsided by a truck going full speed is to grossly understate. Numbly, I drove to the hospital through heavy traffic, wondering if my beloved granddaughter would still be alive when I got there. It was the longest trip of my life.
She was—just barely. I put my arms around my sobbing daughter as we all awaited the outcome, which was virtually certain to at least involve brain damage. The only question was the severity.
Gloria was put into a drug-induced coma. It was explained to us that keeping her in a coma would give her brain the best chance to minimize the damage. For six days we prayed, awaiting the results of tests, which couldn’t be administered until after the drug-induced coma was lifted.
Finally, the verdict came in. “Gloria’s brain damage is severe and irreversible,” said her doctor. “She has enough brain capacity to keep her physically alive, but she will never recover cognitive function. It would be best for you to pull the plug. I am sorry.” Her parents asked for a night to pray about their decision.
In the morning they returned resolute. “If Gloria dies, it will be by the hand of God. But we will give her every chance to live and to be healed.”
The doctor was not pleased with their decision, but agreed to perform the tracheotomy and g-tube surgeries necessary for Gloria to sustain physical life. She remained at the hospital for about six weeks before finally going home.
For these past fourteen years Gloria has been at home, cared for 24/7/365 by a team of nurses and by her mother, who often has to pull extra duty when nurses fail to show for work for whatever reason. She cannot speak. Gloria has had all the possible medical remedies humans can offer. She has been taken to healing services. Many have come to pray for her. Through healing has not occurred, countless lives have been pointed to Christ in the process. And still we sing to her the silver song.
We who love Gloria feel like the dwarfs in the final scene of the 1937 Disney classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The dwarfs weep as they keep vigil over their beloved Snow White in her glass casket, helpless to deliver her from the sleep of death. Finally, Prince Charming arrives to administer “love’s first kiss.” Snow White awakens. She and Prince Charming head off together to live happily ever after.
Someday Prince Jesus will come and kiss our beloved Gloria. And someday we will all be together in heaven, where we will live happy ever after. But in the meantime, I have never forgotten Gloria’s God inspired words to me, that changed the course of my life.
“We can listen longer if you tell us a story.”
