Words From the Heart

By JACK BRUBAKER

HOLD ONTO HOPE, cling tight to love,
Know that God’s watching from heaven above.
He knows, He sees, He’s here, He cares,
Loves you and hears every one of your prayers.

Following the murder of five young Amish girls at the West Nickel Mines School in October, many Amish turned to songs and poetry to help them cope with shattering grief.

A young Amish mother wrote the lines above as the chorus of a plaintive song. She sings it with a pleasant country twang.

Amish teenagers also have learned the lyrics and sung them for families of the surviving children.

Here are the four verses:

There was a schoolhouse down in the valley,
Just like the others in Lancaster County.
Why he picked this one we may never know,
We want to believe that God planned it so.

All the good memories of all these past years,
Just thinking about them almost brings you tears.
Now it’s all changed in a matter of time,
Forty-five minutes changed for a lifetime.

They were little sunbeams sent from God above,
Ours to cherish, to hold and to love.
Neighbors and school friends, making memories together,
Now they’ve moved on to their new home forever.

Heaven’s more beautiful than ever before,
With these lovely smiles to adorn that shore.
Imagine the beauty of that Holy City,
With all these new angels walking the streets.

The woman sings another song in close harmony with her daughter. This song celebrates a positive aspect of the catastrophe — the survival of five of the 10 girls shot in the schoolhouse.

Here’s the last verse:

We miss them so much it hurts;
When will the pain just go away?
They were our friends, our sisters, too;
Now they’ve gone home beyond the blue.
We know that they are happy there,
Not a worry, not a care.

So let’s just look for the good things:

We’re surrounded by miracles.

Those old, familiar songs

Other Amish have recited age-old songs to help ease the pain.

On the afternoon of Oct. 2, Henry Z. Fisher, of Kinzers, sat down to write to Die Botschaft, an Amish newspaper.

"One of those rare days with bright blue skies and fluffy, white clouds!’’ he began. "It was a pleasure to hang out the laundry on a morning like this!’’

Children returning from school with the news about Nickel Mines interrupted Fisher’s writing.

Again he scanned the bright sky.

"Even now we can see five helicopters hovering around up there,’’ he wrote. "We have not heard names or details yet, and can only pray without ceasing.’’

He ended his letter with the words of a familiar hymn that has braced many others facing challenges.

This is my Father’s world, Oh, let me ne’er forget, That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet!’

Other Die Botschaft correspondents also quoted songs:

Precious children, gone to Heaven, from the home filled with care,
Now are singing, oh, so happy, in that lovely land somewhere.

And:

There is a friend for little children above the bright blue sky,
A friend who never changes, whose love will never die.

Poetic tributes

Several Amish poets have memorialized Oct. 2. All mention the brilliant early autumn weather that contrasted so sharply with the day’s bleak events.

An anonymous poem, printed in the November issue of an Amish monthly newspaper, The Diary, begins:

On a bright and sunny day,
The children went merrily to school.
They were innocent, happy and gay,
With nary a thought of Satan’s fierce tool.

On the day after the murders, a teenager musing in her family’s farmhouse south of Georgetown wrote "On the Nickel Mines School Shooting.’’

Her poem begins:

Today a tragedy came in an unforeseen way,
To a quiet country street, on an idyllic day,
And children, the innocent, lie dead on the ground,
In our frail human minds no true reason is found.
Dazed men stand and watch as helicopters are leaving,
In noiseless, green fields, the families stand grieving,
The bright sun’s out of place in the wake of their crying,
Hopes have been shattered, their daughters are dying.

This poem and others conclude with the girls ascending to heaven, where poets foresee an eventual reunion of parents and children.

But one poem, created by an Amish father and son, imagines a different kind of reunion. It’s just a little poem, but its message is not:

From Columbine to Nickel Mines,
Heaven’s school is growing full.