Eventually, just as the last rays of sunlight were setting, the women were ushered into the house. Amy inspected the new cabinets and shelving. They looked fine. Then she stepped outside to see what progress had been made in cleaning up the yard. She didn’t see the hole. All of a sudden she was falling forward. She heard a snap and felt searing pain shoot up her right leg. She lay on the ground in agony. The other women rushed to her aid. They comforted her and kept her still while someone drove back to Dohnavur to fetch a truck. The truck was back in record time, and Amy was rolled onto a stretcher and lifted into the back of it. The truck sped back to the hospital at Dohnavur, where Dr. May, one of the hospital’s woman doctors, examined Amy’s injuries. She shook her head as she did so. Amy was sixty-three years old and had a badly broken leg and twisted ankle. She needed to be treated by an orthopedic specialist at another hospital. Dr. May gave her a shot of morphine for the pain and sat beside her as the truck bumped its way over the windy road to Neyoor, where there was a hospital with an orthopedic specialist.
The specialist set Amy’s leg in a plaster cast and bandaged her twisted ankle. After several days in the hospital, Amy was allowed to return home to Dohnavur. Over the next few weeks, her leg started to heal until she could walk out onto the veranda that stretched across the front of her room. The swelling in her ankle went down so that she could wear her shoes again, but something was still not right. There was pain in her back, and it was not getting any better. In fact, as the rest of her body healed, her back got worse. Dr. May and Dr. Webb-Peploe began to worry. Was something else wrong with Amy? Only time would tell, and it did. The truth, which slowly revealed itself, was that Amy had suffered some irreparable damage to her back during the fall, and as a result she was partially crippled. Even though her broken leg had healed, for the next twenty years she would never again walk more than a few steps or be out of bed for more than an hour or so.
It was a good thing that this truth revealed itself slowly, because it took Amy a long time to get used to the idea of being crippled. Amy had been so active for so long, it was hard for her to accept her new life. At the same time, she loved being in her bedroom, which she called the Room of Peace. The room had an entire bookcase of inspiring books that friends had sent her over the years. Amy hadn’t had a chance to read many of them before, but now she did. A huge birdcage was built on the veranda so that Amy could see finches and canaries from her bed. Sometimes Amy even convinced her nurse to let the birds fly free around her room. The birds made a terrible mess, but Amy loved to feed them and have them swoop down and land on her bed. The garden outside her window was kept especially beautiful, with bougainvillea and jasmine twining their way delicately around the pillars of the veranda.
Despite the surroundings and the kindness of people to her, Amy was bothered by the fact she was a burden to people. Since the day she and her brothers had helped the old woman with the bundle of sticks all those years ago in Belfast, she had lived to serve others. Now she needed to be helped almost around the clock. It was very hard for her to accept. Amy was the one who hated to have her photo taken and who wrote stories about herself as if they were another person’s adventures so as not to draw attention to herself. Now everyone knew she was sick and needed help. Amy had spent so many years focusing on others, and she did not want the focus on herself. She even found it difficult to talk to her doctors about her health. She would rather talk to them about more important things!
Even from her sick bed, there was something Amy could still do. She could speak up through her writing. She could still declare to the world the challenge of India’s great spiritual need. For years her supporters and friends had begged her to write the entire story of Dohnavur. Now she did so in a book called Gold Cord. And that was only the beginning. As she sat in bed year after year, songs, letters, poems, and thirteen more full-length books flowed from her pen.
Her next book told the story of the child who had always remained special to her, Arulai. The book was called Ploughed Under, and it began with Arulai arriving on Amy’s doorstep thirty-three years before. Arulai was forty-nine years old when Amy had her fall. Everyone assumed she would be the one to take over most of Amy’s leadership of the family. But it did not happen that way. Soon after Amy’s fall, Arulai caught smallpox. She recovered, but not completely. Sometimes she was so weak she would lie for days in the bedroom next to Amy’s, and they would exchange notes with prayer items and Bible verses on them. Over the next three years, Arulai’s health went up and down, until in May 1939, she died and was buried in God’s garden along with so many of Amy’s other “children.” The sweet sound of the children as they sang at Arulai’s graveside wafted into Amy’s Room of Peace and filled Amy with both sadness and joy.
Throughout her remaining years, Amy prayed for her two adopted countries. She prayed for England. News came in 1939 that Prime Minister Winston Churchill had declared war on Hitler’s Germany and later on Japan. This was a particularly sensitive matter in the family, because there were some German missionaries working with them.
World War II gathered strength, and by 1942 it looked as though Japan would capture Singapore and possibly move on to invade India. Plans were drawn up for an evacuation from Dohnavur into the mountains should such an attack occur. Thankfully, it never happened. However, just as during World War I, World War II placed a huge financial strain on the Dohnavur community. The price of basic food items like flour and rice increased to nine times their normal price before the war. In addition, mail from England became unreliable, and many checks mailed to Amy never reached their destination. Through all the hardships created by World War II, Amy prayed for her extended family from her Room of Peace.
Amy also prayed for India, the country she loved and had lived in longer than any other. By 1947, India was in the midst of a long struggle for independence led by a man named Mahatma Gandhi, who was just two years younger than Amy. Both of them had a vision for a different India, and both of them stood for many of the same things. Gandhi worked hard to break down the caste system and to educate women. But he worked for change through politics, while Amy worked for change through opening people’s hearts to God’s love and power.
As India freed itself from England’s control, the nation began to tear itself apart. Muslims in the north demanded their own country separate from Hindus, and soon Pakistan was partitioned off from India to become a home for Muslims. Through all of India’s turmoil, Amy faithfully prayed for the country.
Through the years, Amy’s Room of Peace continued to be a place where people could find wisdom, encouragement, and love. Amy seldom forgot to write a note for a child’s “coming day,” the day that celebrated each child’s arrival at Dohnavur. She was always encouraging the staff members, too. She regularly participated in the leadership of the family from her bed. Even though she had been an invalid for many years, Amy had hundreds of friends who loved her and cared for her. The words God had given her in the cave at Arima, Japan, more that fifty years before were true. He had promised Amy that even though she would not marry, she would never be lonely; and she never was. She was a mother to hundreds of girls and boys, and a friend to many others.
Slowly, Amy’s strength began to fade, and her nurse noticed she slept more and more. Then, on the morning of January 18, 1951, she did not wake up at all. A few weeks after her eighty-third birthday, she passed over to the other side, as she so often described death. The leaders and children of the Dohnavur family tiptoed into her room for one last glimpse of their dear Amma.
The family knew what to do next. Amy had made them promise weeks before that they would bury her in God’s garden exactly as they had buried those before her. There was to be no extra fuss, no coffin, and no headstone to mark her grave. Just as she had wished, Amy’s sari-clad body was laid on a flat board. The children picked hundreds of fragrant flowers and placed them over her until her whole body was under a mound of blooms. At noon her body was carried to the village church. Hundreds of people filed past to pay their last respects to her. And her old friend, Bishop Selwyn of Tinnevelly, hurried to Dohnavur to conduct the public funeral service.
Then, with the bells in the prayer tower chiming out one of Amy’s favorite hymns, Amy was gently carried to the Room of Peace for a private farewell among the family. Finally, the board bearing her body was lifted into the air on the shoulders of her “sons.” A chorus of little voices sang out the songs Amy had written for them as her body was carried to God’s garden. Amy Wilson Carmichael was laid to rest under a tamarind tree in Dohnavur, India. The family had promised not to mark her grave with a headstone, but they hoped she would forgive them for placing a stone birdbath over her grave. It bore a single word: Amma.
