Elie Gardner and Cara Herman are singing "There's Your Trouble" by the Dixie Chicks. My eyes are grazing across the pages in a large binder sitting on a small table in the corner.

Every plastic sheet-protected page reveals so much about the life I used to live.

The binder isn't mine. In fact, this is the first time I've seen it. Each page is filled with lines of song titles and the artists who perform them. It's karaoke night at Ybor City's Gaspar's Grotto, and the Poynter summer fellows are taking over the small wooden stage in the front right corner of the bar. My eyes focus on the award-winning songs of Shania Twain when suddenly Andrew Tran sits down beside me with a small scrap of paper and a pencil in his hand.

"Go ahead, I was just looking," I tell him as I turn the binder in his direction. I'm not sure I'm ready to return to my past life, so he is a welcome interruption.

I started referring to my past as my past life five years ago when I gave up music and started pursing a career in journalism. I gave it up not because I didn't love it, but because I made a promise. As I look over the pages in this karaoke binder, I remember the promise I still need to keep.

***

My love of music wasn't an accident. I got it from my grandfather, who I knew as "Pop" and later as my manager. The first song I learned to sing was his favorite � Patsy Cline's "Walking After Midnight."

"She knew what real music was," he'd say. "She had a melody, not like today's music."

He was a performer in his own right. He used to sing on stage with his brothers in his little country town of Antioch, W.Va. and was now a regular in the wooden pews of his church cheerfully belting out every gospel hymn from memory.

I started learning to perform on a scratchy karaoke machine we bought at the Ames Department store. I performed every night in my grandfather's living room.

My debut was a solo in my church's children's choir. Soon, I was invited into the adult choir to sing solo descant soprano. And at 13, I became a song leader.

I spread my wings into the community starting with my grandfather's senior citizens center. There were only a few dozen people in the audience, but a gig is a gig. I opened for a delicious liver and onion lunch. I performed none other than Patsy Cline.

My performances spread into musical theater with solos in "Annie," "Oliver" and "Jesus Christ Superstar." I was soon gracing the stages of banquets, pageants, college choral groups and country gospel jubilees. My audience grew from a few dozen to a few hundred.

About the time I started performing in the community, my grandfather's health began to decline. It didn't stop him from shaping my music career. We practiced four to five hours a night, every night.

He became my manager, my voice trainer and my biggest fan.

When I turned 16, his health got worse. He needed help with household chores like vacuuming, dishes and balancing his checkbook. He moved a little slower, got a little stiffer and his hands started to shake.

One Sunday morning when I was getting ready to sing at church, my grandfather looked worse than I had ever seen him before. Before I walked out the door, he gave me a hug and told me goodbye.

"I probably won't be here when you get back," he said.

I didn't want to leave, but he made me. I was never allowed to miss a singing opportunity, especially when I was singing for God.

As I walked through the side door of the sacristy, I started to cry. Somehow I had managed to hide the tears from my mother on the way. I was numb. Did he really just tell me goodbye?

A few minutes before church started, the priest and servers went to the back to get ready for the service. I begged God to give me more time with my grandfather.

"Please God," I whispered as I looked through the large wooden doorframe toward the altar. "I'm not ready to live without him yet. I still need him."

The tears fell faster from my eyes. "I'll do anything, Lord. Take my voice. You can have it back, just give me more time. I'm not ready. God take please take my voice instead of him. I need him."

I dried my tears and walked out to the front of the congregation. I wasn't much of a song leader that morning. I started the songs, then backed off the microphone and used all my energy to fight back tears. I didn't make it through the whole service without crying, but I did what I could.

***

My parents were in grad school when they had me. We lived on the second floor of my grandfather's house with my older brother. My mom was his youngest child.

While my parents were in class, my grandfather and grandmother took care of me.

My crib was in the hallway outside my parents' room. Every day around 6, I would wake up and whisper my first word, "Pop."

It was our morning ritual. My grandfather told everyone we met about it. He would wait at the bottom stairs every morning to hear me call his name. Then he would come upstairs, take me out of my crib and bring me down to breakfast.

We lived there for three years and then my parents bought a house down the street. I stayed with Pop every waking moment of every day. When my grandmother broke both her legs, I moved in to help out. I was 7 years old. After her death a year later, I just stayed. It was so natural.

My grandfather and I were inseparable. We went everywhere together. I was known to our family as "Pop's little shadow."

That shadow got smaller as I started high school. I soon found myself taking care of him. I'd help around the house, pick up medications and even call from the payphone at school to make sure he was taking his medicine and eating like he should.

He was diagnosed with congestive heart disease.

When I turned 15, I started getting up every hour during the night to check on him. I spent many nights sitting in the living room looking into his room making sure that he didn't stop breathing. I didn't go out much or stay out late because if I did he would wait up on me. The doctor said he needed a full night's sleep, so I made sure he got one.

I began having a recurring nightmare, in which he was shot with a bullet that was intended for me.

This was about the same time I made my deal with God.

My grandfather was alive when I got home from church. He lived another year. I stopped singing a year after his death. The music just wasn't the same because I wasn't singing for me anymore. I was only doing it for him.

He never knew about the deal I made with God. He would have rather died than to see me stop singing. Looking back, I'm sure that my prayer didn't make a difference in how long he was on this earth. Everything happens when it is supposed to happen, at least that's what my grandfather would said.

But I had to stay true to my promise. God gave me more time with my grandfather, so I gave God back my gift of music.

After his death, I shut the door on my past life. He was gone. The music was gone. It was time to move on.

I now tell stories through written word, video and voiceovers instead of melodies, chords and lyrics. I love journalism as much as I did performing. In fact, I tell more stories than I ever could in my music.

I'm living in a different town, married to the love of my life and blessed by being accepted to the Poynter Institute's summer fellowship. In my mind, God transformed the gift I returned and exchanged it for the life I have now.

During the first week of the summer program, Mike Greener showed me a piece he did on hospice care. His photo slideshow was set to song by Carol King.

As I looked through the amazing black and white photos, I saw my grandfather. Every shot was my grandfather like I had never seen him before. He didn't die at home like the man in the photos, he didn't suffer like many people in hospice care do and he didn't die a slow death. He just went to sleep and never woke up.

In the photos, I saw a family surrounding their loved one as he took his last breath. I wasn't there for my grandfather's last breath. I was on my way home from a high school football playoff game. I didn't get to hold his hand like the family in the photos. Instead he was alone on the third floor of a hospital.

I never got to say goodbye.

***

I go back to the karaoke songbook for the fifth time. Each time I see the parts of my life I've been trying so hard to hide from the world.

I still sing occasionally. But my performances happen in the shower and the car, with people in my living room while playing Karaoke Revolution, or on stage with people singing so loud that they hide my nervous voice.

Every song I see has a memory. Every memory includes my grandfather.

This is the first time in six years I can't turn off these memories. The melodies screaming from the karaoke speakers fade away as I look at these pages of song titles. The only thing I hear is Pop begging me to get on that stage and sing.

So I do.

My hands shake as the music starts. I see a faded image of my grandfather in the back of the bar. My voice shakes as I sing a song I never sang with my grandfather. The lyrics say everything I've wanted to say for the past six years.

"Cause you're everywhere to me. When I close my eyes, it's you I see. You're everything I know that makes me believe. I'm not alone. ...You're in everyone I see. So tell me. Do you see me?"

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