Synesthetic decay
I can still hear echoes from my childhood. Standing in the basement of the old church, my grandfather and I are next to each other, my grandmother seated at the piano to my right. The baby blue walls take in what little sunshine peeks through the small windows at the opposite wall. They match the key Grandma is improvising in. G major.
“He loved me, and I knew him
And all my love is through him.”
We sang gospel with glee, the three of us. Before that summer, I don’t remember ever making music. I remember the screaming contests my preschool friend and I had, and I remember the television blaring various theme songs from that era. My summer babysitter loved her soaps, and One Life to Live or Days of Our Lives were on during our supposed naptimes.
This was different. No babysitters to be shuffled off to, no preschool with people I was indifferent to. No one insisting that I was deaf, with my mom dragging me to this doctor and that. This was a splash of color on my otherwise monochrome existence.
Every week that summer, I remember going to church. Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, Wednesday mornings and evenings, occasionally Fridays and Saturdays. I had no love for the Wednesday services, they were devoid of music. Sunday school, which was taught by my cousin, was also rather boring. I wanted to be with my grandparents, who were ministers and music makers. Always for the music. While the sermons were filled with fire and brimstone, and prayer time was filled with tears and cries, my terrified screams were always soothed moments later with beautiful music from the piano.
I was ten when the first of our trio died. My grandfather had stepped in after my mother filed for divorce, doing his best as a paternal guide from nearly 400 miles away. He would visit often, and I would spend my summers and winters with him and Grandma. I was about eight and a half when he stopped singing with Grandma and me. When his voice was silenced forever, I was lost and traumatized. The baby blue of G major simmered to gray clouds and minor musings. Dreams of him wasting away from cancer haunt me to this day.
Grandma didn’t sing so much after that, but she kept pace at the piano. Even as her fingers gnarled from arthritis, and wear, she could play Rachmaninov, and Joplin-esque pieces every Sunday. Sometimes, I would sing, sometimes, I would play the flute, or I would sit at the piano in her stead when she wasn’t up for a duet. She would show me her competition ribbons from the 1930s, and state regret that none of her daughters played much or at all. That baton was passed to me, even if I preferred Mendelssohn or Brubeck, and I never felt my gospel possessed the finesse her versions did.
I was twenty-four when our musical duo was broken up for good. Grandma succumbed to pneumonia and kidney failure, but her death was relatively swift. She had even played piano at church just two weeks before and delivered a mini sermon the week before that. Had she been alive during the era of Skype and FaceTime, we could have continued our music making. Sadly, I had not seen her in nearly two years, prior to her death, although we always wrote letters and spoke on the phone. Still, she wasn’t ready to go.
The day she died, the sky cried out and the gray turned to purple, pummeling the ground with cold flakes of snow.
My paternal grandparents stayed out of the picture, but I never had the idea that they cared particularly much for music. My step-grandparents did care. At least one did. My step-grandmother was more into theater arts, which didn’t interest me in the slightest. But alongside my grandma, my step-grandfather, Bill, was there to watch me perform for many recitals.
We never sang together, and I do wish he could have one opportunity to make music with his biological children. Bill never played an instrument, to my knowledge. He adored chamber music, however, and he did support my endeavor for the arts, despite not being a blood descendent. Yet he is always Grandpa Bill, and I always remember the famous saying: “Love is thicker than blood.”
So as I type this, I monitor my phone for text messages. As of this week, Grandpa Bill has begun hospice. Some look forward to transitioning to the next life. Those of us left behind find fiery red sunsets on these dark December evenings. I imagine that the sunsets are in a-minor, to match the anger in my heart. The cancer that claimed my passionate singing grandfather will claim this man too. It is a disease that he has fought valiantly, but for several years now. One that has caused his heart to fail. The clock ticks, and I am powerless to do anything about it.
It hurts to sing, so I don’t try.
“He loved me, and I knew him
And all my love is through him.”
We sang gospel with glee, the three of us. Before that summer, I don’t remember ever making music. I remember the screaming contests my preschool friend and I had, and I remember the television blaring various theme songs from that era. My summer babysitter loved her soaps, and One Life to Live or Days of Our Lives were on during our supposed naptimes.
This was different. No babysitters to be shuffled off to, no preschool with people I was indifferent to. No one insisting that I was deaf, with my mom dragging me to this doctor and that. This was a splash of color on my otherwise monochrome existence.
Every week that summer, I remember going to church. Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, Wednesday mornings and evenings, occasionally Fridays and Saturdays. I had no love for the Wednesday services, they were devoid of music. Sunday school, which was taught by my cousin, was also rather boring. I wanted to be with my grandparents, who were ministers and music makers. Always for the music. While the sermons were filled with fire and brimstone, and prayer time was filled with tears and cries, my terrified screams were always soothed moments later with beautiful music from the piano.
I was ten when the first of our trio died. My grandfather had stepped in after my mother filed for divorce, doing his best as a paternal guide from nearly 400 miles away. He would visit often, and I would spend my summers and winters with him and Grandma. I was about eight and a half when he stopped singing with Grandma and me. When his voice was silenced forever, I was lost and traumatized. The baby blue of G major simmered to gray clouds and minor musings. Dreams of him wasting away from cancer haunt me to this day.
Grandma didn’t sing so much after that, but she kept pace at the piano. Even as her fingers gnarled from arthritis, and wear, she could play Rachmaninov, and Joplin-esque pieces every Sunday. Sometimes, I would sing, sometimes, I would play the flute, or I would sit at the piano in her stead when she wasn’t up for a duet. She would show me her competition ribbons from the 1930s, and state regret that none of her daughters played much or at all. That baton was passed to me, even if I preferred Mendelssohn or Brubeck, and I never felt my gospel possessed the finesse her versions did.
I was twenty-four when our musical duo was broken up for good. Grandma succumbed to pneumonia and kidney failure, but her death was relatively swift. She had even played piano at church just two weeks before and delivered a mini sermon the week before that. Had she been alive during the era of Skype and FaceTime, we could have continued our music making. Sadly, I had not seen her in nearly two years, prior to her death, although we always wrote letters and spoke on the phone. Still, she wasn’t ready to go.
The day she died, the sky cried out and the gray turned to purple, pummeling the ground with cold flakes of snow.
My paternal grandparents stayed out of the picture, but I never had the idea that they cared particularly much for music. My step-grandparents did care. At least one did. My step-grandmother was more into theater arts, which didn’t interest me in the slightest. But alongside my grandma, my step-grandfather, Bill, was there to watch me perform for many recitals.
We never sang together, and I do wish he could have one opportunity to make music with his biological children. Bill never played an instrument, to my knowledge. He adored chamber music, however, and he did support my endeavor for the arts, despite not being a blood descendent. Yet he is always Grandpa Bill, and I always remember the famous saying: “Love is thicker than blood.”
So as I type this, I monitor my phone for text messages. As of this week, Grandpa Bill has begun hospice. Some look forward to transitioning to the next life. Those of us left behind find fiery red sunsets on these dark December evenings. I imagine that the sunsets are in a-minor, to match the anger in my heart. The cancer that claimed my passionate singing grandfather will claim this man too. It is a disease that he has fought valiantly, but for several years now. One that has caused his heart to fail. The clock ticks, and I am powerless to do anything about it.
It hurts to sing, so I don’t try.