"In the end, music carries many of us right into old age. Don recalls interviewing a group of Methodist women in their eighties and nineties about what hymns and songs they loved and why. They responded with selections from the all-time church hit parade of golden oldies: 'Blessed Assurance,' 'How Great Thou Art,' "I Come to the Garden Alone,' and of course, 'Amazing Grace.' These they had sung, some of them, for eighty years or more. When they began to say why they loved them, they spoke of hearing their grandmother's voice; of feeling the vibrations in their mother's breast as they leaned against her in church; or the squeak of the parlor organ when the family would gather to sing; or of church suppers, funerals, or 'dinner on the grounds' in their Southern traditions. They were speaking of the body memory of these songs and hymns. Something about their whole lives were encoded in the singing. Such is the power of music to carry us through life's passages."