美国国家公共电台 NPR Heartbeat Music: Parents Remember Their Son Through His Song Of Life（打印版）

美国国家公共电台 NPR Heartbeat Music: Parents Remember Their Son Through His Song Of Life（在线收听）

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, BYLINE: 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 marrow transplants, some sort of an infection of the lung. But he rallied again - decided to remove his spleen, and he rallied from that.

LANTZ: During these ups and downs, although his health was precarious, 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 recording.

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 belongings 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.