美国国家公共电台 NPR Heartbeat Music: Parents Remember Their Son Through His Song Of Life_在线英语听力室

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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Sometimes we get a story that doesn't need much of an introduction. This one is about an unexpected gift. Here's reporter Erika Lantz.

ERIKA LANTZ, BYLINE¹: Nate Kramer was a tall, quiet college swimmer when he was diagnosed with leukemia. His dad, Vince, says it was the beginning of four difficult years.

VINCE KRAMER: Chemotherapy, fungal infection of his sinuses, 30 operations, bone marrow² transplants, some sort of an infection of the lung. But he rallied again - decided³ to remove his spleen, and he rallied from that.

LANTZ: During these ups and downs, although his health was precarious⁴, Nate started working with a music therapist from Cincinnati Children's Hospital named Brian Schreck.

BRIAN SCHRECK: Just make it up.

LANTZ: Here's Nate's mom, De Ann.

DE ANN KRAMER: Brian would come over to the house.

SCHRECK: Let's see.

D. KRAMER: They would play music. They would record music. Brian was really teaching him to play his guitar.

SCHRECK: The Rolling Stones or Jimi Hendrix or different riffs that he loved to play.

LANTZ: That's Brian Schreck, the music therapist.

SCHRECK: (Singing) You make my heart sing.

LANTZ: For the most part, Nate's parents didn't really know what Nate and Brian were recording⁵.

D. KRAMER: When Brian came over, I generally used that time to say, hey, I'm going out for a walk. I wanted to give them that private time.

LANTZ: As the years passed, Nate and Brian grew close.

D. KRAMER: I think Nate could talk to Brian about things that he didn't want to talk to us about because it would hurt us.

LANTZ: One day, Nate asked Brian about a project Brian had been working on. As part of his job as a music therapist, Brian had started recording the heartbeats of babies and children near the end of life. Then he would layer their heartbeats with melodies. Brian asked Nate.

SCHRECK: Would you like to do one? And he said sure.

LANTZ: But Nate's dad, Vince, wasn't keen on the idea of a heartbeat project.

V. KRAMER: And it's, like, OK, is that the only heartbeat I'm going to have left of him? No, thank you.

LANTZ: To Vince, it felt like giving up, and he wasn't ready for that even a couple weeks later when Nate, then 26, was back in the hospital.

V. KRAMER: He was doing very poorly. I just actually asked Nate, Nate, do you still want to fight? And he said to me, want to fight. That was the last words he said to me.

LANTZ: Nate couldn't talk after that. Five days later, his mom was up early with him.

D. KRAMER: It was just the two of us, and I was laying basically on his chest and listening to him, could still hear his heartbeat then. That afternoon, he had passed.

LANTZ: After Nate died, Brian gave Vince and De Ann a couple CDs from Nate, but Nate's death was still too raw for them to press play. They sold their house with its painful memories, packed up their belongings⁶ and moved. Just over a year later, Vince was at home. It happened to be Father's Day.

V. KRAMER: And I was rearranging my office, and I came across CDs that had a very unique - some sort of a, you know, custom cover. I don't even know what this is, so I - when I plugged it into my computer, the first thing I hear was...

NATE KRAMER: Happy Father's Day, Old Man - love you.

V. KRAMER: It was Nate's voice, and I was like, what? So then I listened to the next song, which was the heartbeat song.