Yesterday at the store, an old man, Al, came in with his granddaughter to pick up her flute that we had repaired. He asked if we had any flat-wound guitar strings for his Gibson 225-T. We didn’t have the strings, and as I began to look them up in the catalog, he began to tell me some of his story.
Al had been looking for a guitar when he was a much younger man, and his friend at Ferguson Music gave him a call to let him know he had put back a guitar from a new shipment that he thought he might like. Al went in, tried the guitar, and bought it right then. There was a blind man that tuned the pianos at Ferguson and at a bunch of different places around town. He said the blind man had an incredible ear, and was one of the best piano tuners around. The first thing Al did after he bought the guitar was take it to the blind man for him to adjust the pickups to get the perfect balance. Al said when he got the guitar back, it was magical how good it sounded after the adjustments.
Now, obviously, Al loves this guitar. In fact, he said that just about everyone that’s ever played it has offered to buy it from him. While he didn’t really say it, I could tell that he absolutely loves playing it too. One of my favorite things to do is to listen to people talk about their favorite things. I love the passion that people have, the life that is evident, when they talk about the things they love. Al had that type of passion in his voice. Here’s where Al absolutely broke my heart, but showed me a brilliant picture of what real love looks like.
He proceeded to tell me that he hadn’t played his guitar in a long time. His wife had gotten “the cancer”. She knew she didn’t have a long time left to live, and so she asked him to put his guitar up for a while so that they could spend as much time together as possible. So Al put it up...
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I can’t really explain why, but that was such a clear picture of true love to me. To put aside something that you care deeply about to pursue time with someone that you care even more deeply about. I hope that I can learn something from Al, that its very worth putting yourself aside for a little while to bring yourself as close to someone as possible, to put them ahead of yourself. I think that we can learn something from this about how to live like Christ has called us to live too.
2 comments:
dude your name is my name
Al died in 2006.
'Al and his guitar' was one of his albums names.
Al was indeed a great guy.
I learned more about him after he died than I did while he was alive, he was that kind of guy, he never sought the limelight for himself and didn't brag. He was vited canada's #1 guitarist by teenbeat magazine even...
His wife's name was Ina.
I'm his grandson.
Some things shouldn't be forgotten and are worth repeating right.
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