How It Started

This is Peter Rosenberg and I'm so glad that you're listening to this podcast. If you're finding it meaningful, I want to ask you for two things. Would you mind sharing it with someone?

Would you mind telling somebody you know who is struggling as a caregiver about this program and what it can mean for them? We have over 800 episodes, more than 250,000 downloads. The need is massive. I can't do it on my own.

I'm still a full-time caregiver. But I'm putting it out there as best as I can. And I can use your help in sharing it with others. The other thing is, would you consider helping support what we do? If you like what you're hearing, if you're finding it insightful, if you're finding it encouraging, please help us do it more. We can't do it alone.

We ask that you help us. These vows that are spoken never be broken. All my love, all my life. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg and that is my wife. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is my wife. You know, it's one of those songs that she sings it in the key of B and I don't write songs in the key of B. I don't particularly like to play in the key of B. I can play in any key except the key of B. For some reason it just blows my mind. I mean, I can do it, but it just messes with my brain, so I'm working on that.

I love that song. Maybe I have to go learn that because there was another guy that played that. I wrote it, but there was another guy that we brought in and it was so funny to watch him because he came in and he's kind of a heavyset fellow wearing a pair of overalls and work boots. I mean, he looked like Junior Samples. Y'all remember Junior Samples? That's what he looked like and he sat down and played this song that I wrote.

I had the chart there. Just nailed it and I was like, wow. I was first learning a lot about Nashville musicians and how great they are. You cannot let looks deceive you. He didn't come in there looking like a star or anything else. It looked like he just parked his truck filled with squash out in front of the studio and walked in and played this chart down better than I could play it. I wrote it and it was quite amazing to see.

Gracie cut that thing and just did a great job on it. The reason I'm doing that is because next week is our anniversary, so I'm taking a moment if you don't mind. Those of you who regularly listen to the program certainly know a lot about her. If you're just now joining the program, I will tell you about this woman who has had such a profound impact on my life. I'm going to tell you the whole story. We had friends of ours, mutual friends at Belmont that wanted us to meet each other. I was a senior at the time even though I didn't graduate that year. I graduated the Christmas right after. My transfer credits were all messed up. She had come back to school after recovering from this wreck and they told me she had a wreck.

I said okay, but I didn't have any frame of reference. I had never been in a relationship with somebody that was hurt. They said she had a pretty bad wreck and she's back now. She's been out for a year recovering. She comes down the walkway there at the student center at Belmont University where we both were. She was a vocal performance major and I was a composition piano principal major.

Both of us were studying music. This girl was just beautiful. I saw that she limped, but again I had no frame of reference.

She had a pretty significant limp in her walking gait. She came up to me and she had heard about me and she wanted to test me out and see what kind of substance I had to me which was precious little at the time. My life was pretty unremarkable until that day.

That day my life became different. I stood up to greet her and she said, can I put my feet up in your lap? I thought that was kind of an odd question and I said okay. Her feet swelled when she sat so she had to prop them up all the time. So she plopped her feet.

I think she wanted to see how am I going to be able to do with all this. I looked down and she was wearing jeans that were kind of cropped jeans. They stopped it right below her shins so you could clearly see her ankles. I saw the disfigurement of her right leg and the pretty nasty scar that she had from a skin graft on her left leg. I learned later that they had taken a bunch of skin from her stomach and put it over this because it was just laid bare in the wreck.

But the right foot was horribly misshapen. Well both of them were. I very suavely and debonair said good lord girl what happened to you? She looked at me with a look that could curdle milk and she held a level gaze. She said I had a really bad car wreck.

That's how it started. I was taken with this girl. I was taken with her strength. She was very forthright, plucky, very in your face. No nonsense about her in that sense.

No fear. She just dove right into life. I got to know her a little bit.

We talked a little bit. We spent some time there at the School of Music at a bunch of practice rooms. A bunch of us were crowded in there one time and she was doing a song and it was the first time I ever heard her sing. It was this song.

Let me go over here to the caregiver keyboard. Do you know this song? It was Jeffrey Osborne, On the Wings of Love. I'm not going to sing it because I can't sing like Jeffrey Osborne. But Gracie sang it. And oh did she sing it. And I never heard a voice like that.

I was dumbfounded, tongue tied, overwhelmed. My friend Darryl Adcock was playing that on the keyboard. I played it once I think and he was playing it because we like to switch.

He was a better player than I am. I heard her sing, well I heard her sing this song. You know this one.

Anyway, you know as the dear. And she just nailed it. It was just marvelous. I'm captivated and I'm playing the piano and I'm listening to this woman sing and she was still a teenager. I mean she was 19. And there was just something about her that was just, wow it's just hard to describe. And I really liked her. She liked another guy at the time.

Kind of. Well he liked her. I think he liked her more than she liked him. But they were friends.

I went to him and said, hey look I'm kind of interested in taking her out. Are you okay with that? And he said, yeah they were not. I don't know. Maybe he just hadn't committed. Maybe he didn't realize.

I don't know. But anyway, I was interested. Oh well actually there was something that happened before then. I got to tell you. Now some of you have heard this story and it's in her book. But it's a good story. She had taken him out for his birthday. This was on a Tuesday night. They had gone out and they went to the spaghetti factory in downtown Nashville.

I don't know if it's even still there. But that's where they went. Now that comes into play in this story in a moment and you'll know why. Because at 6 o'clock the next morning, I was at my dorm and she lived in an apartment not far from the campus. And at 6 o'clock in the morning I get a phone call.

And she said, Peter this is Gracie Parker and I've been sick through the night. Can you come help me? I don't have anybody to help me. Can you come help me? So I said okay. So I go over there. I get dressed.

I go over there and knock on the door. And she comes to the door. Now my wife is a beautiful woman. That was not her finest hour.

Okay, let me just say it was not her finest hour. And I go in and she says, she didn't hardly look at me, she said thank you so much for coming. I got to go back to bed. So I kind of helped her down the hall, followed her down the hall and then she went and I looked around as I came into the apartment. And I just took a couple steps in and watched her go and then I'm looking around and surveying what had happened.

Did I mention she had been to the spaghetti factory? There was piles of vomit all over this apartment. I mean in the den, down the hallway. I went down the hallway into the bathroom and it was on the floor. It was in the bathtub.

I went into the kitchen to get some supplies. It was in there. It was horrific. It was a horror movie. It was awful.

I will tell you this, it was awful. And I thought, and she said she was not a big woman. Where did all this stuff come from? She was T90 and where did this come from? So I got rubber gloves. I found some of those in bucket and Lysol and everything else and I think I found one of her old raincoats or something in the closet.

I put it on just kind of a hazmat suit and I cleaned every bit of this stuff up. Now I didn't know that I was not her first call that morning. She had called the guy she had been out with. I think she had called her mother in Florida. I think she called her mother. I was the only one that answered. And I cleaned every bit of this up, made sure she was okay, made sure she had everything she needs and I went back to my dorm and got cleaned up myself and went to class for the rest of the day.

After that is when our relationship took off and I had asked the guy about that and he was like okay. I guess cleaning up vomit was the thing that cleansed the deal and I helped her write her book. You can go see her book. It's Gracie Standing with Hope. You can go out to Amazon.

Just go to her website and you'll see a link to it. I was really proud of the chapter title of this book because all the chapter titles are in really nice cursive and most people miss it. But in chapter 11 you'll see that the chapter where this event occurs is called A Match Made in Heaving.

I was so proud of that title because evidently that's what cleansed the deal. I showed up to clean up a mess that I didn't create and a little less than a year later I stood in front of my father and her father in a whole room full of people at a church down in Destin, Florida and promised to love her and care for her and take care of another mess that I did not create. I married a woman with a broken body.

My life has never been the same. Our anniversary was 38 years now. 38 years. There's one place in scripture where the number 38 is mentioned and that's the man that laid by the pool. He'd been there for 38 years. And the scripture says that Jesus knew that he'd been there a long time. Even God calls that a long time. And it's a love that has endured a lot of clean up on aisle 38.

We'll talk some more about that when we come back. Happy anniversary, Gracie. 38 years. That's extraordinary. And I'm better for it and I'm grateful for it. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is Hope for the Caregiver.

It's even more than one measure. Even longer than forever. It's like a fire in me inspiring me to love you even more. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberg and this is the program for you as a family caregiver and I'm taking a little bit of extra time today to talk about really the entire story of why I even do this program. Why I write books. Why I even write songs today. It's because of the woman's voice that you hear right there. This woman has inspired me, exasperated me, worn me out, captivated me. I have never met another human being like this woman. She is truly the most extraordinary person I've ever known in my life.

And I cringe at the mistakes that I've made and I hang my head in sorrow and failure over so many things. But at the same time I also, my heart leaps within me when I think of the heights that we have scaled together. And some of those times I've helped carry her and quite frankly some of those times she's helped carry me. Even with her broken body. It's hard to really describe Gracie. You have to experience Gracie because she is a rather unique individual. Full of life and passion and when she sings.

And I just, anyway. So 38 years ago we were married. This fall it will be 39 years when I asked her. And so I'm closing out my fourth decade now of my relationship with this woman and taking care of her. It started off, as you heard in the last block, showing up at her apartment and cleaning up vomit. It's not the most romantic thing to start off a relationship but it certainly is indicative of our life. Is there any really better way for the two of us to have started off life than to do that? So that story. Then we went out to dinner.

We took her out on our first real date. I don't even know if this place is still there in Nashville. It's over there right off of Music Road not far from school. It's called Fazons.

It's a nice restaurant. I saved up a lot of money to me to take her out. I worked incessantly. I think when she met me I was right under 160 pounds. I was so skinny I could lay under a clothesline and not get a sun tan. I had to wear skis in the bathtub just to keep from going down the drain. I was thin.

Those days are long gone. Part of that was because I had a meal plan that stopped on Friday afternoon. So if I didn't have any money, I didn't buy anything to eat for the weekend. I'd go without food.

One time I remember I had an apple for the whole weekend. That was all I had. You know how some people are poor and you don't know it?

Well, I was certain of it. I tell people I was an Army Brett. A Salvation Army Brett. Times were lean. But I worked. I cleaned offices. I mowed grass.

I did all kinds of stuff. I worked all the time and tried to get through school. I got through school with less than $5,000 of school loan. That was with a private education. That's how much I worked to save up. So going out on a date was a big deal. I didn't have a lot of money to go out on a nice date. But I wanted to take Gracie someplace nice.

So Gracie came from a well-to-do family. She wanted to see, again, that's like testing me like I talked about in the last block. She put her legs up and wanted to see how I was going to react to her injuries. Now she wants to see how well I can take care of her.

So we go out to dinner and she's ordering appetizers and this and that. I was calculating everything in my brain on how much all this was going to cost. I ordered salt. I was a bit concerned. We muddled through it. But at the end of it, I looked at what she did. Then she wanted dessert. Again, this girl was not a big girl.

So I was thinking, where's all this going? But she wanted to test me. She wanted to see what could I do and would I be able to take care of her.

I said, look, I'm tapped out. She ended up leaving the tip. Looking back at it, I don't feel bad about it because she ordered all the food.

But that was our first date. She was putting me through the paces to see what I brought to the table. I took her home to meet my family in South Carolina. My mother just instantly fell in love with her. She pulled me aside and she said, this woman can fly, Peter. This is an extraordinary woman. She is.

She was and she is. We were sitting around the table at my family's house. I have a large family. I have a lot of brothers, four brothers and a sister.

A lot of them were there. You ever see the scene in Blue Bloods where they are all around the table? That's a small representation of my family. So we are passing the food and she puts a little bit on her plate. I looked at her and said, baby, don't you want any more? She said, well, I'll get it.

I've seen her eat. We were at the restaurant and she was loading up then. I said, well, baby, don't you want some more? She said, well, I'll get it next time it comes around. I saw my brother Jim down at the end of the table. I said, baby, there ain't going to be no next time.

You better get it while you can. She didn't understand it because she only has one sister and the sister is four years older. Again, a very small family. They didn't have this boisterous loudness at the table like we do and all the craziness of my family which she immediately immersed herself in. We all grew up playing games and puzzles and all that kind of stuff and she grew up singing, doing voice lessons, piano lessons and doing homework all the time. So her life growing up was much different than mine and she took to it.

She really did. She immersed herself in the loudness of the family because we are loud. We just make the Waltons look like a library. In fact, I think my parents, my brother Tom's family, they just had their first grandchild and I think that's the 26th great grandchild. We have a big family and we don't often all get together. In fact, we haven't all been together ever with all the great grandchildren. We've been together, most of us. Last Thanksgiving, there was like 50 of us.

It's a pretty big crowd and Gracie was right in the thick of it. Music was a big part of our family's life. I sat at the piano and she would sing. It was just wonderful.

And then again, that's how it started. Then we went through the first surgery together. They were going to put a fuse in her ankle and this was in May of 86. We got married in August of 86. Since next week is our anniversary, you know that. And we went through this surgery and again, I had no frame of reference of anything like this. And there was a lot of bustle to get ready for this thing and I met with her.

You know, most girls want you to meet their parents. My wife wanted me to meet her surgeon. True story.

I feel like Joe Biden. True story, man. True story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Corn Pop. He was there. Sleepy Joe.

Now I'm going to start running into Trump and Biden having to pay. I can't do Kamala or Kamala. So she wanted me to meet her surgeon. But anyway, we got ready for the surgery and she went in and had this thing and the doctor came out and said everything went fine.

Y'all take a break. She's going to be in recovery for a while. They fused her ankle. They took bone out of her hip and put it into her ankle and to hopefully alleviate where that joint was causing so much problem.

Most everything that Gracie deals with today is because there was such a concerted effort to save her legs. And we both know now that looking back, they should have been amputated. At least the right one should have been amputated at the time of the wreck. It nearly was in the wreck.

And they should have taken it off, but they didn't. And nowadays, there will never be another patient like her. Her prosthetist back in Tennessee told me this.

He said there will never be another patient. They stopped counting at 200 breaks. And her legs should have come off at the time of the wreck. No surgeon today would keep those legs. Because prosthetics have come too far and she would have been up and walking and all kinds of things and instead she was condemned to a life of a lot of surgeries. But that's 40 years ago.

They didn't know a lot of things that they know now. You can't play that game. You have to accept that it is what it is.

You don't have to agree with it. You just have to accept it because it's reality. And so when the doctor said, you know, take a break, I took a break and I went and saw a movie. I wrote about this in my new book.

It's the first chapter in A Minute for Caregivers when every day feels like Monday and it's called The Opinion of Others and that's when I had some non-related family members that were there. And just clucking their tongues and grasping, clutching their pearls over me going to, because I went and saw a movie. I didn't know. And I came back and found out everybody was just ragging on me. And I was like, well it's best you know now because Peter will never be able to handle that. And I'm like, well I guess I showed them, didn't I? But I didn't know. And it set my feet on a path of obligation. And no small amount of shame and embarrassment, which led to some resentment. Not a little bit of it.

Towards them, Gracie, me, God, everybody. Because nobody told me. Nobody told me what to do. I didn't know. I was just a kid. I was 22.

And I didn't know. I just knew that I loved this woman, but I didn't know how to function in that world. And it took many, many years and a lot of heartache before I did. And yet we got married and my dad did the service.

He officiated. And she choked up when we were doing the vows. She said, in sickness and in health. And I just looked at her. I just saw that she was exquisitely beautiful. I was hopelessly in love with her and still am.

And I didn't understand why she choked up. Now I do. And it's okay.

It's all good. It's all in God's hands. And what a ride it's been for 38 years. We'll talk more about it at the next block. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver. We'll be right back. Yes, I love you so.

And that for me is all I need to know. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger and I'm taking some time on this program to celebrate an extraordinary journey that Gracie and I have had together 38 years next week for our anniversary. A lot of people don't know that she's an exceptional jazz singer. I mean, she's got jazz chops and we're going to get her back singing. I was very pleased this week that we finally got her back in her prosthesis so she could start wearing them.

Not very much, but it's slowly but surely getting there. And that's the first step towards her getting her voice back in shape. And I am looking forward to that because I told her, I said, baby, I got songs you need to sing. We got a whole record we're going to cut.

In fact, I was just sending over the list to my engineer slash co-producer down in Nashville, Chris Latham, who wrote the theme song with me of our show. So all that to say, we're going to get her back on her feet and her feet back on her and get that voice back in the studio and hopefully back on this program as well. I think you'd enjoy having her share a little bit, but this last surgery did take a lot of steam out of her. So I forgot to tell you all how I asked her father if I could marry her. And her dad, you'd have to know her dad. His face is kind of carved out of granite and he's tough. He's 88 years old and he lives out here in Montana right up the hill.

And he is pretty spry. He was out today working on some signs on some of the trails. He named like one trail is called Gracie's Way. The other one is named after Andrea, her sister. Another was named after Gracie's mother, Carol, who passed away. He's got different trail names and some of the signs when the cows were here, they knocked the signs out. And he's up there fixing the signs.

He's 88 years old. You wonder where Gracie got it? Well, she got it from him. He told me one time, he said, Man, Gracie really is stubborn. And I looked at him within credulity and I just laughed. I said, You're the fountainhead for it.

Where do you think she got it from? Honestly, because they are two peas in a pod. But he's got this voice of gravel and tough guy. And so I went to him and asked him, you know, we're sitting there in Nashville, and he had come up and I said, Jim, I love your daughter. And that voice is, Do you really? You know, it's just real deep voice.

Do you really? And I went, Yes, sir. No kidding. But it's been quite a journey. And we have had a lot of sorrow, a lot of heartache, a lot of joy, excitement. I've been in surgery after surgery after surgery with her. I've watched over her when she didn't even know I was watching over her. And I have checked to see if she's breathing on more times than I want to remember. I have saved her life. I have helped her when she was choking.

I've done it all as her caregiver and as her husband and as her friend. And we've had horrific bumps in our marriage. And we've been through a lot of counseling. But I can think of at least two counselors that we went to that are divorced. We put them over the edge.

One priest who left the priesthood. I think there's one of them that turned to drugs and alcohol. But, you know, we're still here. We've had unbelievable highs. I think one of the greatest moments is when I watched her snow ski. And we, as a family, skied.

Parker and Grayson were with us. They were both teenagers and they were skiing. And Gracie had been training with the Disabled Ski Program.

And we were all on the blues, not the green slopes, the blue slopes over at Big Sky. And she was going down stuff that would curl your hair. And she was doing it. And we were skiing as a family.

And she's on two prosthetic legs. I mean, it was just incredible to watch. One of the greatest moments.

I wish you could all have seen it. It was an extraordinary moment. Another when she and I danced together at the 2020, at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York.

It was 20 years ago. You know, we just had the RNC convention. And we were on the stage with the president. And we're dancing and Lee Ann Womack is singing I Hope You Dance. And Gracie and I are dancing.

And the balloons are all falling. We're right there in front of everybody. And we've had moments like that. I've watched her with Wounded Warriors at Walter Reed and other military bases. I've watched one time.

I don't think she'll mind me sharing this. One time we were at this place in Nashville where a lot of kids and all came hanging out. And it was kind of an arcade. And it was right there in the Greenhills area of Nashville.

A real nice place in the mall. And there was a movie theater there. But there was all kinds of attraction for kids.

A lot of families came. And Amy Grant was there. And I've known Amy for a very long time. Gracie and I have known she and her family for a very long time. And Gracie was standing there. And she was using her cane, I believe, at the time. Maybe little kids kept coming up to Amy to get her autograph.

You know, teenage girls and so forth. And this has been 18 years. You know, it's been a while. And Gracie stood there. It was a little painful for her. But she stood there patiently while Amy signed autographs.

And the girls run off, you know, hee hee hee hee, you know, kind of thing. And Amy was very gracious as she is. And she was doing this and then, sorry, a girl came up to Gracie who was in a wheelchair. And Amy stood there quietly while Gracie talked to the girl in the wheelchair. You know, Gracie wears her legs uncovered.

They're robotic looking. And this girl came up to Gracie in a wheelchair. And it was quite a moment. I mean, for Amy, for Gracie, for me. I really wanted a moment for Gracie.

Gracie didn't even think of anything about it. It's just part of who she is. But for Amy and I, we stood there and Amy looked at me and smiled. And, you know, it was such a moment. And I'll never forget it.

It was probably one of the most proud moments I've ever had in my life with my wife. As I watched her. Because of what it meant to that girl in the wheelchair. Who, you know, Amy stood by.

Amy Grant stood there watching this while Gracie talks to the girl who's in a wheelchair. I think those are the moments that I look back over our life together. And God has woven together in such a beautiful way. I want to end with this song that I wrote about my journey as a caregiver. My friend Buddy Munlock helped me with this song. And then Chris produced it with me.

I played it. Gracie sang. And she really wanted to do a good job.

She was very nervous about it. And I looked at her afterwards and I said, Well, you did, darling. Happy anniversary. I know what this means. I'm not unaware. I understand the cost.

What I pay to care. I see who you are. I see all you've been. I still love you now. Like I did way back when.

A road turned. But I'm still here walking with you. Right here.

Right now. That's all we can do. In this moment, I live my life with you. I know there will be sorrow.

We'll face that somehow. But my hands can't hold tomorrow. I can only hold you now. Memories have wings. Some will fly away.

I will keep them safe. And we still have today. I looked in your eyes. You smiled back at me.

All I need to know. Right there for me to see. A road turned. But I'm still here walking with you. Right here.

Right now. That's all we can do. In this moment, I live my life with you. I know there will be sorrow. We'll face that somehow. But my hands can't hold tomorrow. They can only hold you now. I know there will be sorrow.

We'll face that somehow. But my hands can't hold tomorrow. I can only hold you now.

Hold you now. No kidding. There is a correctional facility in Arizona that helps us recycle prosthetic limbs. And this facility is run by a group out of Nashville called CoreCivic.

We met them over 11 years ago. And they stepped in to help us with this recycling program of taking prostheses and you disassemble them. You take the knee, the foot, the pylon, the tube clamps, the adapters, the screws, the liners, the prosthetic socks. All these things we can reuse and inmates help us do it.

Before CoreCivic came along, I was sitting on the floor at our house or out in the garage when we lived in Nashville. And I had tools everywhere, limbs everywhere, and feet, boxes of them and so forth. And I was doing all this myself and I'd make the kids help me.

And it got to be too much for me. And so I was very grateful that CoreCivic stepped up and said, look, we are always looking for faith-based programs that are interesting and that give inmates a sense of satisfaction. And we'd love to be a part of this.

And that's what they're doing. And you can see more about that at standingwithhope.com slash recycle. So please help us get the word out that we do recycle prosthetic limbs. We do arms as well, but the majority of amputations are lower limb.

And that's where the focus of Standing With Hope is. That's where Gracie's life is with her lower limb prosthesis. And she's used some of her own limbs in this outreach that she's recycled. I mean, she's been an amputee for over 30 years.

So you go through a lot of legs and parts and other types of materials, and you can reuse prosthetic socks and liners if they're in good shape. All of this helps give the gift that keeps on walking. And it goes to this prison in Arizona where it's such an extraordinary ministry.

Think with that. Inmates volunteering for this. They want to do it. And they've had amazing times with it, and I've had very moving conversations with the inmates that work in this program. And you can see, again, all of that at standingwithhope.com slash recycle. They're putting together a big shipment right now for us to ship over. We do this pretty regularly throughout the year as inventory rises, and they need it badly in Ghana. So please go out to standingwithhope.com slash recycle and get the word out and help us do more. If you want to offset some of the shipping, you can always go to the giving page and be a part of what we're doing there.

We're purchasing material in Ghana that they have to use that can't be recycled. We're shipping over stuff that can be, and we're doing all of this to lift others up and to point them to Christ. And that's the whole purpose of everything that we do, and that is why Gracie and I continue to be standing with hope. standingwithhope.com.