How Deep Is Your Love?, Good Question

by Kevin Burton

  My sister and I had one last shared musical moment, in the days before her death Aug. 25 of last year.

   We had thousands of them over half a century together. What I wouldn’t give to have a few more of them now.

   The final one came last August, courtesy of a hospice worker with a good head and a better heart.

   The worker said that hospice patients are often cheered by music and suggested we play something for Pat.  The medical staff had told us that Pat could no longer see anything, but heard everything going on around her.

   “What would be a good song,” the worker asked.

   “I don’t know…she likes the Bee Gees,” I said.

  The worker then read down a list of Bee Gees tunes before settling on “How Deep Is Your Love.”  She placed her phone very close to Pat’s ear and hit “play.”

   When Pat heard the super-familiar opening notes to the introduction, my sister brightened noticeably, bringing my brother Steve to tears.

    The hospice worker encouraged us to sing along and to come near so Pat could hear better. Through my own tears I couldn’t get enough air to get on top of the song, so I sang a lower harmony.

   As I have written, my sister and I were quite close as a rule, but in the months before she died there was some distance between us.  For that reason I choked on the lyric,  “and you may not think I care for you, when you know down inside that I really do.”

   I thank God every day for the thoughtfulness of that hospice worker. That moment was the pure definition of bitter-sweet, but I needed it then and a part of me will always reside there.

   There isn’t much to be mined from Bee Gees lyrics. I love the band for their harmonies and musicality.  I have been known to grab on to song lyrics, try them on for size, turn them inside out. Not so much with the Bee Gees.

   My renewed identification and fascination with How Deep Is Your Love lyrics begins and ends with the title.

    As my sister lay dying, beyond medical assistance and needing direct supernatural intervention to recover, to survive the week even, the question hit me hard.

   And it may be the best question in the long and storied history of rock and roll music: How deep is your love?

   Yes, your sister said some things, did some things that weren’t right. She hurt you. But how deep is your love? How could you be so silent for so long, cheating the both of you out of shared moments, moments that can’t be replaced, and now can’t be replenished.

   How deep is your love big brother? And how deep is your pain now?

   Feel free to look on as I paint a sad picture of what happened within my family last year.  Also feel free to step into my shoes, if they fit.

   What’s going on in your family? Are there things that need to be repaired?  Can you meet somebody half way, or maybe all the way?  Many of you don’t have any frayed relationships that fit this narrative. That’s super!  Do what you can to keep it that way!

   In the moments after we played that song for my sister, I told myself that the rest of my life should be the “How Deep Is Your Love” tour.”  How deep is your love for God? How deep is your love for his great commission? How deep is your love for the family you have left?

   How deep is your love for your fellow man, many of whom are a heartbeat away from eternity in hell?

   If you don’t in all honesty have the answer to the question that you can live with, as I admit I still don’t, it may be helpful to jump over to the accompanying question, “How deep was Jesus’ love” when He died on the cross to save us from our sins and ourselves.

   How deep is your love was a damning question in the days after Pat’s death. I hope it can someday be a prodding question that forces me to take God at His word. I hope some of this helps somebody, somewhere.

   Choice Hospice is the name of the organization that helped my family with Pat’s last days. Anyone in the Wichita area in the unfortunate need of such services, give these folks a call. You will not be sorry you did.