joegoda | Musica Interruptus

If I was a musician, I say "This is for a friend of mine, much loved. It's a tune that has been brewing in my head and heart for a while now. It may not be perfect, but, well... here it is."

She sat gazing out the window, at the rain, at the bamboo wind chimes that tootled in the breeze brought by the mild passing storm. She sat gazing at the window, at... long ago, and far away. She sat gazing at nothing much really.

The soft sounds of the piano played gracefully from some CD that had found it's way into some CD player. The tune was familiar, and she reached for the name, but she just couldn't feel it. Some German? Maybe French? composer had done the piece. Her fingers twitched with the memory they tried to reach, but they couldn't quite feel either.

She knew she used to play. She knew she used to play and people would come and listen to her play and it was wonderful. She played at... someplace big, someplace important. The name seemed so far away, she should remember it, but every time she stretched, it moved to some other hidden place.

Sometimes, unbidden, a memory would come up, like a bubble in champagne, rise and burst and for a moment, for a second, for sometimes a bit longer, she would hold that memory and live there, again. But the memory would fade and go chasing the rest of her, somewhere down the rabbit hole.

The Storyteller sat across the room, watching. He was silent, because, after all, what could he say? He took in her graying hair, that he remembered to be brown when he was younger. The look in her eyes were just as bright as when he was a child, but there was something ... missing. He knew what it was. He knew, just as well, there was nothing he could do to re-write this story.

Every day, early, as she had done for most of her life, she rose to greet the sun. She loved the sun. She rose and sang a tune from her own childhood. If she had been asked the name of the tune, she would turn, look at the questioner and ask, "What tune?", turn away and continue on her morning way, still singing.

Every day, there was a plate of her favorite breakfast, bangers and mash, waiting for her, along with a cup of cooled tea with three lumps of sugar in it. Her breakfast was always on the back porch, where there were humming birds that flitted here and there among the tall and red trumpet like flowers. There would be quiet music, always playing in the background. There would be a single white rose on the table, fresh and half bloomed, sitting in a crystal vase, thin and delicate.

She loved roses, and she loved hummingbirds, you see.

When her breakfast was over, she might sit for hours, looking out at the world, feeling the world slip away from her, bit by memory bit, piece by memory piece.

She might, just as easily, lift herself from her chair and sit in the living room, in her chair, the chair she remembered, the chair that was as much a part of her as the music. When she did, she might find needlework waiting for her, a project she started long ago, and she would knit for hours, letting her fingers remember the work as well as they remembered the music. If they happened to drop a stitch here or there, it simply added to the character of the... whatever it was she was making.

And then, there was the piano. Always the piano, where she would sit, close her eyes, and ignore the frustrating pull of the sucking hurricane that had become her mind. Her fingers, having done this hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands of times before, would stroke the keys as they knew they could, and pull out of wood and string, brass and steel, the sounds of the world as it was when.

She had gotten past the anger of it all, or so she would remember. This is not to say that she didn't sometimes cry from the frustration. Nor is it to say that she didn't sometimes get frightened and look for something familiar to hold on to, like a troubled swimmer holds onto that life ring for dear life. She was not an angel, by any means, and sometimes she would rage at the Gods and Goddesses at the pure evil of the injustice of it all. In her good times, though, she would remember that she had gotten past the anger of it all.

The names of friends had left her, drifted away into that mental nowhere-land where the faces of her students she had taught to play had gone. Her children, those wonderful people that she had given painful birth to, were still there, for now. Her husband was still there, thank the Goddess. She could still remember them.

She knew though, that they too, would fade. She also knew that when they did, she wouldn't even know that she had forgotten them. They would become strangers to her, and she would look upon them, quizzically, thinking they were very nice to be taking such good care of her.

The Storyteller was not known to her. She had met him, once, twice, and then that memory faded too. She couldn't see him sitting there, because he wouldn't, couldn't let her. He sat, just out of sight.

He watched as her daughter came, to check on her, to make sure she was comfortable. They would play cards, some days, and laugh at memories that were almost right, but not quite. Her daughter would sit with her at the piano and turn the pages for her, and sing songs from long ago, long ago. Her daughter would sit for hours and talk or listen, gently, lovingly.

The Storyteller watched from his place, far, far away. He knew what was coming. He knew that it would come, and he was helpless in delaying it's arrival. He knew that it was the way all stories end. Still somehow, even to him, who knew every story ended and began exactly as it should, it just didn't feel... right.

He knew that when the inevitable came, he would still be far, far away. He also knew that the world would weep at her passing, that the world would remember her in small and very large ways.

He knew that when the inevitable came, he would know immediately. And, on that day, he would meet with the Gatekeeper, and the Singer of Souls, and he would explain to them, in great detail, as only he could, who this woman was that was coming to see them.

He would ensure that there was, past the Gate, a place where there would be a back porch, and hummingbirds and roses. And a piano, of course.