In April, I spent my final day at Mott Children's Hospital.
I finished singing "Let It Go" and noticed a girl in a wheelchair waving me over. With a huge smile on her face, she grabbed my hand. "Do you remember me?" I recognized her immediatly. "I was the girl with no voice. I saw you last year in October. I couldn't talk then because I had a tube in my throat that messed up my voice." I remembered singing with her at the Halloween party the Family Center hosted that year. That year, she silently mouthed every single word to the music of FROZEN as I sang to her. This time she sang with me. "Did you know I died? They brought me back to life. Now I have a new heart." She has her brother take a picture of us together and whispers in my ear, "You are my favorite."
It sounds trite to talk of magic, but some things are just that. Sometimes, there is an undeniable spark of magic when the we meet the darkest of trials with a force of light--like a Disney song. We find that, like the carefully crafted characters of Anna or Elsa or Buzz Lightyear, we are flawed. We are not "super heroes". But, as Gerald said, we can all be super. Our power, our strength, lies in how we face the darkness head on with all of its danger and all of our feelings of fear and inadequacy. The magic is in the companionship, strength and joy we find in the very place where they seem least likely to exist.
As Chris Buck said, we each have a gift -- something that makes us special, some strength that is all our own. My hope, my vision, is that by hearing about what I have experienced at Mott, others might be inspired to share their gifts as well. I am working with students, hospital staff and the University of Michigan to ensure that Music at Mott will continue after I graduate, becoming an official partnership with the University. Plans are already in motion for training more volunteers, giving class credit to the organizer of the program and even putting on full musicals for the patients. But that is not enough. Ann Arbor, Michigan is not the only place in need. That became glaringly evident to me from the Facebook comments after the video highlighting our work went viral.
I was truly shocked by the number of people I heard from, all over the world, moved by the work at Mott and wishing they had something like it. I was contacted by so many students here wanting to help me carry on my "legacy". I thought that was a funny way of putting it at first. I never thought of this as a legacy. I thought of it as something that just made sense. But don't we all want to create something that will last after we've gone? That's the point of even this writing portfolio...proof that I was here, that I tried to do something that mattered. The vision is that the comments you can read above from Facebook and the inspired words I heard from students all over the country will turn into action, into change, into a way of facing the darkness and diffusing it with undeniable, contagious, and yes, magical, light.