"Silent Night, Shared Forever."

With the coming of Christmas, I found myself doing what so many musicians do — playing the big three carols late into the quiet hours of the morning. Fingers numb, my pedal foot begging for relief. The dog had long since given up and gone to sleep, probably wishing I would close the door and finally call it a night.

And then, Silent Night appeared.

My mind wandered, as it often does, and suddenly I was no longer at the piano. I was back at a Christmas gathering from my teenage years — a moment that has never left me.

My mother had suffered a massive stroke when I was in high school. Overnight, everything changed. She lost her speech. Her mobility was limited. She wore a specially engineered leg brace, and for two years, we watched her struggle through both good days and not-so-good days. She communicated through her eyes, shared our exhaustion, and somehow still showed up — attending my graduation and every one of my chorus concerts.

Music never left her.

As I sat down at the stage for our Christmas gathering years ago, my mom loved music and every opportunity to listen to our jokes or our playful translations of seasonal songs. The power went out. The room fell silent. And someone produced a napkin with the words Silent Night written on it.

Everyone began singing.

I positioned myself beside her, instinctively, as I always did — there to help, to support, to be her voice if needed. Then something extraordinary happened.

She began to hum.

In that moment, time stopped.

She had no words, yet her voice emerged. Quiet. Steady. Present. It was the most powerful moment of my life. The song was difficult for her to finish, but not a single eye in that room was dry. From that day on, we held onto that song. It became ours. We even joked that we would sing Silent Night on the Fourth of July, to keep the connection alive.

The reality is this: the part of the brain that controls movement and speech can be damaged, while the parts that hold language, creativity, and music remain untouched. The body is a beautiful machine. My mother found her voice again — not through words, but through forming one note at a time, over and over. Music no longer slept in her that night.

Though we heard no words, we witnessed something sacred:
a beautiful exchange through song.

As I played Silent Night all these years later, that memory came rushing back. And I was reminded of how deeply music touches our lives — how it holds us together when nothing else can.

Thank you, Ridley Academy, for allowing me to remember just how important music truly is.

With gratitude,
Patricia Larkin