Crystal's Hymn

Crystal Chandler finds the perfect memento of her grandfather, a former Seventh Day Adventist preacher, to bring with her when she moves to New York. 

Season 1, Episode 3: Crystal's Hymn
Guest: Crystal Chandler

Crystal Chandler runs a media production company that highlights the underrepresented voices in society while providing production opportunities for young people of color to gain hands-on media experience.

You can follow Crystal on social media @TheCrystalLens. You can can learn more about her work and production company at www.TheCrystalLens.com.

Original music composed by Nate Sharples.

Sound FX, Foley, and mixing by Kenneth Donahue.

Story editing by Galen Beebe.

Produced and hosted by Lori Mortimer.

"Victory in Praise" by Cast of Characters; licensed from Soundstripe. 

Visit www.MementosPodcast.com to see some photos of the memento in this episode. 
Follow the show @MementosPodcast on Twitter and Instagram.
Follow the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mementospodcast
Follow Lori at @mortaymortay on Twitter and Instagram. 

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Mementos … sometimes what you really keep is on the inside. 

CRYSTAL: About a year ago, I'm moving to New York, and I want something of my grandfather’s. Like, I need to have something other than just a picture to remember him by. And I go back to my childhood home. My mom and my grandmother still lived there, and they had really cleaned out a good portion of his stuff at that point.

[00:00:31] And mind you, he's passed for about seven, eight years at this point. And so I'm looking in the closets, and I'm looking past this plastic bag with like this gray thing in it. And I'm thinking, oh, it's just some, like, I don't know, like rain jacket, like, like, let me find something, you know, more of substance. And I keep passing it.

[00:00:47] I'm pushing the bag to the left. And to the right. And just looking around it. As soon as I'm about to leave, I think, okay, let me go look one more time. And for whatever reason, I don't know if it was God or the universe or what, but something told me to open up that plastic bag. 

And I just thought, like, this is worth a million dollars.

[00:01:14] I couldn't have found anything better than this.

[00:01:25] LORI: Welcome back to Mementos. I'm Lori Mortimer, and I am so happy to return, finally, with some new episodes after an almost two-year hiatus. 

That's one reason this is a happy tune.

[00:01:44] But the real reason is because of the story my guest Crystal has to tell us today. It has moments of sadness. But ultimately it's about deep love and bonds between a grandfather and his granddaughter. 

[00:02:00] What's more joyful than that?

[00:02:05] I'll step out of the way now and let Crystal get back to telling us what she found in that plastic bag.

[00:02:19] My name is Crystal Chandler. I currently live in New York City, and I'm originally from Boston. My grandfather's name was Aubrey Prescott Williams, and he was born in Barbados in the 1920s, I want to say. And he went to England and then eventually came to the United States and settled in Cambridge, where his mother was living.

[00:02:43] He was a pastor in Barbados, and then I'm not sure if he preached when he was in England, but he definitely preached when he got to United States. And he was a pastor at Cambridge Seventh Day Adventist Church.

[00:02:59] Growing up, I didn't get to enjoy him as a pastor, but I got to enjoy, you know, all of the years of his, his pastoring through his sleep. 

So my grandfather used to sing in his sleep and sing full choruses, full hymns. He would sing soprano. He would sing the tenor. He would sing the bass and he would sing the piano part and the violin and the trumpet part.

[00:03:24] I mean, he was just a one-man band in his sleep. I mean, fully dead asleep, but he was singing his heart away.

[00:03:35] I remember my cousin and I, sometimes we would laugh or peek and see what was going on, but it was just grandpa singing in his sleep. 

[00:04:01] When he passed, I actually had his blanket. And I kept it with me, and I just never wanted to let it go. Until my apartment caught on fire. We didn't actually lose anything. Like, the fire didn't catch my things on fire. It's just that the entire apartment smelled like smoke, and it's really hard to get smoke out of any type of fabric.

[00:04:24] And so I think in the process of getting rid of things, you know, maybe a roommate of mine tossed it out by accident. 

And so now I go back to, again, to my childhood home. And so I'm looking in the closets,