By Patricia Canright Smith
“She knows by now that grief is mostly endurance, understanding over and over that the person you loved is not coming back.”
The News From Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story, by Joan Wickersham
I wanted music. I used to play guitar, but I didn’t want guitar. I used to sing, but my voice was shot. I wanted to play piano. I didn’t know how. Wayne was the piano player. He would play and I would sing.
But Wayne was gone.
I.
For two years, we’d been shuttling between Seattle, Washington and Wenatchee, Washington, to look after Wayne’s 92-year-old mother, Ruth. She lived in a little house next door to my daughter, Chloe. That week, I’d come down with a nasty flu, and Wayne had to go by himself. This was a Thursday.
On Friday, Wayne got sick. On Saturday, he went to Urgent Care. Sunday night, he died.
Three days.
I didn’t know a fit, 68-year-old rower could die in three days from seasonal flu. This was before the pandemic, before we all found out what a virus can do.
***
Monday, still sick, I dragged myself out of bed to try and take some water. I was dozing on the couch when I heard a knock. It was my son, Kolya. I figured he’d come to check on me, but his face—reluctant, ardently sympathetic, Love being asked to administer poison. My throat constricted. I thought it was one of the grandkids. When he told me that Wayne had died, I said No, gently, as if he’d made a mistake and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. For a second, I was even relieved it wasn’t one of the grandkids.
***
That first night, I curled on my side with a little cylindrical speaker on the nightstand beside my head, as though we had to stay small, take shallow breaths, imperceptible as possible. Should I not have told him to go? Would he have been okay if I’d been there? But mostly, there were no thoughts. I was radiant with unbelief, listening through the music for the thing that kept eluding me.
After that night, I would not be able to listen to music again for a long time. When I do, I will decide to take piano lessons. But not yet. Music had become a dagger; the piano, a relic.
***
Kolya had to drive me to Wenatchee. It was my job to tell Ruth.
Did he suffer? she asked, pleading. Was it quick? Her weeping was constrained, and unbearable.Again and again, But did he suffer? Was it quick?
No,I said. Yes, I said. I had no idea. What I did know was that he collapsed some time in the night after a last, sweet text to me. He never tried to call 911.
***
I wish I’d been nicer. I was sick with regret. I’d tried to shape Wayne up, make him more—respectable, acceptable, adult. Also, less messy.
What a waste.
***
Six days later, at the sudden gathering demanded by sudden death, a particular, terrible type of celebration, I watched myself not fall apart. I watched myself smile, as if my face—my body—would carry on without me.
Later, standing on the driveway, I heard a fluty whistle. I spotted the bird’s silhouette high on the peak of the shed. Another fluty whistle, like he was calling me. The silhouette resembled a robin, but smaller, more upright, and that was not the call of a robin at dusk.
Chloe said, Wayne.
***
Three weeks later, just two days after I’d gotten home, I had to go back to Wenatchee. Ruth had had a stroke. She regained speech, but she never again spoke his name.
Once, It’s been a bad month.
Once, No one wants to be around someone who’s grieving.
Out of some misbegotten notion that maybe she really didn’t remember her only child—after all, she had dementia, she’d had a stroke—I said, Are you grieving? She fixed me with a look and said, You should know.
***
I choked up on the phone with my son Enon, and—Oh, I’m fine, I said, I’ll be fine.
I know, Mom, he said. You’re a warrior. So I was.
Also numb. And deeply unwilling. I just watched myself not fall apart.
***
Back and forth. In Wenatchee, doctors, nurses, Ruth and rehab. In Seattle, files, documents, credit cards, bank; pension, insurance, social security—so much death business. I did it one stubborn step at a time. I was a warrior. Taking care of business was my battle.
***
I wandered the house, my antennae, like cilia all over my body, waving. But where is he?
***
One morning, as I was eating breakfast, a crow landed on the roof next door and stared at me. It took me a minute, because Wayne always did it. Then I got up, went downstairs, and put peanuts in the bowl. The crow was mine now. Wayne.
***
In Wenatchee, I spotted my slender bird on the shed, on a fencepost, flitting back and forth catching flies. I learned it was a a Say’s phoebe, a “tyrant flycatcher with a gentle expression.” And in Seattle, I had the crow, “the largest and most intelligent songbird,” on the roof, on the wire, on the deck or Adirondacks. That sounded about right, tyrant, flycatcher, gentle expression, large and intelligent, songbird—if you count piano-playing. Wayne had the crow’s vocal cords. And no, he didn’t eat insects, but he would have on a dare, to gross out the grandkids.
Two birds, one thread to hang onto.
***
Three months after Wayne died, we helped Ruth go. We assured her she would be with Bud (Wayne’s father) and Wayne. She nodded. Her eyes closed. I watched the heartbeat in the hollow of her throat. She was done, but she kept breathing. Life can be loath to let go.
I watched the heartbeat stop.
Another death. Too much sorrow, and yet, and also, relief. Finally I could grieve. Except—I watched myself not fall apart. I watched myself smile. Even when I was alone, I watched myself keep from falling apart, but it was close sometimes. I was mostly in Seattle, in our house by myself, and there were bad days. I seemed to need those bad days.
***
I didn’t like to see people. It felt like they were tugging at me, like they wanted the terrible knowledge I possessed—they wanted to take it from me. They wanted to see me, they wanted to touch me, they wanted to reach me, and I could only take so much. So mostly, I didn’t see people. I had to keep it to myself.
Now I know it was love. They wanted, somehow, to help.
***
Grief takes time. I don’t mean it takes time to feel better, I mean grief requires time. You have to perform it. You know, light a candle, put on music. Think. Feel.
Instead, I got moving. The purge was precipitous, mindless and relentless. I knew it was overwrought, and still I kept at it, day after day sorting clothes, shoes, books and tools; file folders, sheet music, pens, tacks, and screws. I counted screws. What I couldn’t have known was that going through Wayne’s things—touching, sniffing—would bring back the Wayne I fell in love with thirty-five years ago, my wild, ravishing boyfriend.
He was everywhere, that young Wayne, in every room, flying around, dancing. I was besotted. Wayne was a beautiful animal, and I loved him the way I love a race horse, or a greyhound. I couldn’t help it.
Another reason not to see people. I was busy with Wayne, just like in the beginning.
***
I started listening to music again. Every time, I cried. It was clean, but I couldn’t take much. Then one morning I sat on the piano bench and I leaned in and I played the one thing I knew, Our House by Crosby Stills and Nash. I liked leaning into it, I liked pounding on the keys. I even sang along in my broken voice, but I couldn’t get through the song. Not because of the voice, but because of the words. Our house really was a very very very fine house. We really did have two cats in the yard. Yes, it was easy.
It was time to take lessons.
II.
I want Paul, Wayne’s old piano teacher, to teach me. I’m not sure he’s taking new students, so I tell him, Look, I don’t want to be good, just a couple of lessons to get me going? Of course he says yes. Paul and Wayne loved each other.
He asks what I want to learn. How should I know? I was used to figuring out what Wayne might want. Okay. I want to sit at the piano and pour myself onto the keyboard. I want to lean in, I want to pound. I demonstrate, banging claw-hands in the air and busting my head against nothing, keyboards gone wild. Paul recovers nicely. He chuckles.
Paul will take charge.
First lesson, I learn: Roman numeral I, IV, V; Tonic, Sub-Dominant, Dominant chords. I recognize the progression from guitar. But wait, there’s more! Chords have jobs! Volleyball analogy, functional harmony. Tension, release. Paul’s enthusiasm is infectious. I love music theory. It shouldn’t surprise me: I like structure, I like order.
Except— no stick-on stars, no pencilled dates, no Teaching Little Fingers To Play?
He shows me a basic pattern, and I can instantly play three chords just by moving two fingers. So easy! I sound out the melody for Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Paul seems amazed. I’m not. I’ve sung in choirs since third grade; I can hear melodies. But also, I’m tickled. Like Teaching Little Fingers To Play: Look what I can do!
He jots down the Pachelbel progression because it’s like the Our House progression. I don’t think they’re the same but I don’t say anything. At home, I figure out chords for Swing Low in C, F and G. Then I play the Pachelbel progression over and over. I play Our House over and over. The progressions are not the same, not the way I do it. Like Teaching Little Fingers To Play, I wonder if I’m doing something wrong. I will wonder this a lot.
***
The pandemic arrives and I have a strange reaction, something like excitement. Ha! I have a leg up. The worst has already happened to me.
But it’s not only that. I’m learning this new thing I’ve always wanted to learn. Piano and Paul are lifting my spirits.
***
Paul mentions I can “discover scales,” so I start working out scales. Pretty soon, I realize I’m smiling. In the early days, when I thought nothing could make me feel better, I noticed that a good breakfast brought ease. Comfort from a cup of tea. I’d never understood that the body wants to feel better, that it will help you if you take care of it. Evidently playing scales is good for the body.
***
We practice breathing, long long exhales to take the body’s tension out of it. After all, Paul jokes, you don’t play the piano with your stomach. Right, I think, you play it with your jaw.
Paul’s demonstrations can evolve into music-making, like he can’t help himself. It’s funny, because the impulse to make it music messes me up.
My turn, I streak past the two measures he wants me to try and I do four measures. He stops me. I make a face. I don’t listen. I want to keep going even though I don’t have it down. That’s what I’m like.
Paul says, Wait. Let’s stay out of the diagnostic, okay? It doesn’t help you. What you’re doing is hard. Nothing in our evolution required that we be able to lay down two fingers on piano keys just so (he demonstrates). He seems to find it astonishing, or maybe it’s hilarious, that there even is such a thing as piano-playing.
Slower, gently. Observation: Is that what I meant to do? It’s called Good Practice Hygiene.
***
The crow—now two crows—meet me as I come up from my morning walk. A bonded pair. Maybe I’ll never be happy again. It’s a thought I can look at, and this morning it seems true, and yet this is not a country I can live in. It’s like the pandemic, you have to take it day by day, even one minute at a time. As someone told me, If you get a good day, take it. If you can laugh, laugh. I’ve always been able to laugh.
But not today. I grab the peanuts and feed the bonded pair.
***
I come across Bach, The First Book for Young Pianists, with June, 1958, written inside in pencil. Wayne was eight years old.
I wish people didn’t act like learning something new is only for the young. Like it’s unseemly, learning something new when you’re old.
I start to teach myself Bach. It’s torturously slow.
***
Paul introduces The Mill: two-beat-feel in the left hand, and in the right, one-twos, one-two-threes, fours, fives, up-downs, down-ups, random-ands, etc. These patterns help my brain allow the independent use of the right and left hands. It’s like I’m gaining a magical superpower, independent hands. I also love knowing why we’re doing it. If I didn’t, I might be less enthusiastic about the repetition part.
It’s all in the brain. We are LAYING DOWN NEURAL PATHWAYS. And there’s NO ERASE BUTTON. So go slowly. Take little bites. Stop after every correct trial and take a victory breath. Brand new skill: 20 seconds is plenty. (Twenty seconds is apparently all the neurons can abide.) Only when one pattern is dependable do we push on.
In other words, do what seems too simple and LAY DOWN THOSE PATHWAYS.
Now every time I make a mistake, I worry I’ve messed up my neural pathways. I’ve been teaching myself Menuet in D Minor all wrong. Now what? There’s no erase button.
***
Driving into Wenatchee still hurts, but I steer clear of our old apartment and once I’m there it’s okay. Wayne never lived in Ruth’s little house, which is now my little house. I buy a keyboard for the little house.
The Say’s phoebe, gone all winter, is back. Two of them, in fact, bobbing tails and fly-catching from the fence. I read that they’re monogamous. I wonder if they’re going to nest.
Hi, Wayne. I see you’ve found someone.
***
What do you do when you find yourself on thin ice, Paul asks, and I say, Skate faster! and for the briefest second he looks appalled, as though he’s come face-to face with a moron except he never knew I was a moron, how had he missed it, and now how should he treat me, his formerly bright acolyte—and then Paul laughs and says enthusiastically, No, you get off the ice!
This makes me laugh. That option hadn’t occurred to me.
It’s called the Learning Zone. The goal is to stay above 80% of capacity so you don’t get bored, but don’t go above 100% or you go off the rails.
***
Skin hunger. There’s a name for it.
***
Paul teaches me that three whole-steps between two notes is called a tri-tone. Also, the Devil’s Interval. I can hear the Devil.
He tells me that the C scale is not about white notes, it’s a way of hearing. That’s over my head.
I go to work learning tri-tones. I love them. They’re spooky. You can stack them up and down the keyboard. They tell a story. They sing the blues.
***
Oh, Paul says, an error won’t mess up the neural pathways! If you know you’ve made a mistake, that’s not a problem. It’s when you think you’re doing something right and that’s not what you’re doing.
Oh, good, that’s not my problem. I usually wonder if I’m doing it wrong.
Paul is careful with language so he might not have used the word “right.”
***
Circle of 5ths, Chromatic, Diatonic; triads, inversions. All this amazing armature, my building blocks; I’m fascinated by how it fits. I thought learning the piano would be rote: finger exercises to get my hands in shape, and written scores to follow. It hadn’t occurred to me that the task would be to learn my keyboard.
My keyboard. But should I worry that I can’t play a song yet?
Paul asks if a builder would worry as he poured a foundation, as he framed in walls, as he shingled the roof that the house wasn’t built yet. Don’t attack the present from a future end point.
Naturally, Paul says this with kindness and empathy.
***
Learning my keyboard is not only about building blocks. Now and again I hear: Explore. Sing the piano. Play bongos on the piano. Finger paint: random clusters in one hand, single notes in the other. Find textures, get dimension, Pretend there’s another inmate behind the wall and your only way to communicate is with the piano.. Create a language: what is it? Does it pique my curiosity?
At first, I’m hesitant. I feel shy. It’s all so unstructured. But then—I can pound! That’s a language.
***
I’m tired. As this pandemic drags on, as the novelty wears off, it’s a slog. I recall the flicker of excitement when it started, and even that tiny flicker after Wayne died. But look at people who have lost their homes to fire or tornado, or lost loved ones to war. I see no trace of excitement, just terrible sorrow. My odd moment at the onset of the pandemic, as at the onset of my loss, might not have been a normal response to novelty so much as necessary self-preservation. It’s just too big to take in all at once. I was just thrilled it didn’t kill me.
Observation, not diagnosis. I’m tired.
***
A crow trailing a mussy baby lands on the deck. She puts out word that breakfast is served, and her mate flies in trailing another mussy baby. The parents place the peanuts on the ledge and stab-stab-stab. The piteous babies, with their pink beak-creases, cry softly and ceaselessly. One parent stuffs a tidbit into one baby’s mouth, but the other only pushes bits toward her charge. She nudges again, and again, and at last the baby scoops it up and swallows.
I wonder if that was the first time it fed itself.
***
We’re coming up on the anniversary. I looked at the texts today. On the 25th he went to Wenatchee. On the 26th, he came down with it. On the 27th he went to Urgent Care.
That’s enough.
***
On the morning walk,I catch myself counting troubles. I make myself stop. It’s like practicing piano: Is that what you meant to do? I make myself open up to the morning, and then I realize that Wayne taught me how to be whole-hearted, even though I always felt foolish for being so unguarded.
What a waste.
Loss illuminates waste.
Also, grace.
I photograph a magenta iris, and I weep.
***
I found the Beatles Fake Book yesterday. I taught myself the chords to Golden Slumbers. It was fun. Paul looks slightly taken aback when I show him, or at least I think he does. Am I getting off-track? Impeding my own progress by getting ahead of myself? But no, no, he just leans into it: Great! he says. Then he inquires, with some delicacy, whether I used a chord chart to learn the chords (A minor 7th, D minor 9th, F major 7th—of course I did) and I say Yes! They have all the inversions, too!
So we launch into how to build chords. You see what he’s doing? He’s helping me learn what I want.
***
I have to remind myself that I am playing piano, not pulling weeds, not pounding nails, not pulverizing meat. Rootless chords, slash chords, I love the sounds, but today—no. I can’t get anything moving, not the writing, not the piano. Sorrow is always with me and today it takes top billing. Sometimes you just need a day for grief.
But how can I believe I’ll never see him again? I loved Wayne. Just one last chance to tell him? I never got to say good-bye.
***
Over and over, I ask about my practice. Because of my worry that I’m doing it wrong.
Paul says: Start with yourself. You’re not a machine.
He says: You’re doing this because you want to. It makes life interesting.
He says: Clarity and integrity of one item at a time.
He says: Study how Good feels good.
He says: Cordon off difficult areas and work on them slowly and separately.
He says: Prepare for both order and chaos. Practice for both order and chaos.
He says: What is good for the organism? What is motivating?
He says: Your progress is none of your business. Your work is your business.
He says: If you can play a 6th, play a 6th. We both laugh. We both think 6ths are beautiful.
***
I think the Say’s phoebes have babies in the eves next door. I can hear gentle whistles. I don’t feed the phoebes—they won’t use feeders; they’re insect-eaters—but I keep fresh water in the birdbath. They like to fluffle. It makes them happy.
***
Two-beat feel, tango beat, march with kicker. Straight time, swing time, the deep grammar of rhythm. Gospel chords. I’m supposed to surprise myself.
Oh. I haven’t shown you what you can do? Paul says. The blues scale?
***
I’m slicing strawberries when Leon Russell’s A Song For You comes on, and Wayne’s here, we’re in the kitchen, slow-dancing. I feel his breath in my hair.
He says: How could you think I would leave you?
~~~
Patricia Canright Smith is an old writer and visual artist living outside Seattle, a retired psychotherapist with advanced degrees in psychology and art. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Shenandoah Literary Magazine, Quiddity Literary Journal, Calyx, North Dakota Quarterly, Catamaran Literary Journal, and others, garnering Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations. The essay, “83 Problems, A-Z,” which appeared in The Jabberwock Review, was a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays, 2014. Recently, she’s been collaborating with Paul Finley, a jazz musician, to create audio duets using prose and piano. The audio duet Music Lessons was their first such endeavor. http://proseandpiano.com Bluesky: @pattys83problems.bsky.social Instagram: @pattys83problems http://patriciacanrightsmith.com