This is a little story I want to write down about my piano and why its significance has shown itself to me over time.
From the ages of about 13 - 16, my grandpa lived with us. He was a very kind, generous and well-mannered man. As time went on in our home, however, struggles came up and the honeymoon phase definitely passed. For a man of his accomplishments and independence, old age and dependency must have been extremely frustrating. This was a man who had fought in a war, worked hard to provide for a family of many children, and had an authoritarian streak in him. To be completely dependent on other people, mostly a woman, must have been very hard. His day-to-day enjoyments (outside of holidays & special visits when he would see more family) came from a small list of things: various TV shows, his smoky, blackened toast in the morning, Denny’s Original Grand Slams (Kids Eat Free Tuesdays), and when my sister and I would practice our piano lessons. The sound would start, and eventually he would meander out from his bedroom and sit in the living room. I don’t know how many renditions he heard of The Indian Song, Heart and Soul and Fur Elise.
Eventually, however, tensions were very high in our house as his health declined and I watched my mom suffer under the weight of responsibility for him. Likely out of frustration at his situation, he didn’t always treat my mom kindly and she was breaking in what was often a very thankless job. Not knowing how to release my protective feelings of injustice and resentment, I took control the only way I could: by not practicing the piano. It sounds awful - like I was purposefully taking that joy from him - but it was a 15 yr old's passive-aggressive way of expressing anger.
My timeline is fuzzy, but I know he passed when I was 16, just a couple days away from his birthday in August. Those few days leading to his death were unrecognizable. If you don’t believe in the transformational power of deciding to let Jesus into your life, I hope you one day get to see what we saw happen to him. To summarize, after he had a conversation with my dad and opened his heart to Jesus, he looked, sounded and spoke completely differently. The lines in his face were soft. He would reach for my mom’s hand to hold it, while he talked to her and tears poured from his eyes.
That same year, since Emily and I were still in piano lessons and getting serious about them, I came home from work one day to see a shiny black grand piano with a huge red bow on top sitting in our front room. I think we have a picture somewhere of me covering my face and crying. My piano teacher at the time was there to watch the surprise.
At random times throughout the years, guilt would surface over my attitude and how I had occasionally withheld music from my grandpa. It was hard for me to let that go, knowing I should have been better, that I had been raised better.
Fast-forward to 12 years later, this Fall, I’m making arrangements to have our piano moved in to my downtown Sacramento apartment and processing all the doubts and what-if’s with my mom on the phone, discussing its size, worth, etc… I’d never really known the piano’s origin or cost. Now that I have a tiny bit of experience with pianos and their value, I was more interested in these details. My mom explained that they’d found it in Davis. A woman had bought it brand new for her daughter who ended up hardly playing it, and after having my teacher take a look at it, my parents bought it. When my mom volunteered information about the cost, she said (paraphrased), “Oh it was probably a great deal, but there was no way we could have ever afforded anything close. We used your grandpa’s entire inheritance to buy it.”
I paused for a moment.
She went on to explain that while we didn’t receive a lot of money by any means, it was exactly the amount needed for the piano and they both knew that this is what he would have wanted.
All these thoughts and emotions I couldn't fully digest started catching in my throat and (as I often do) I quickly closed that door before they could leak out my eyes. Thinking (and a could cry) would happen later.
That piano had led the way to the rest of my musician life. All these years, and I’d had no idea.
It’s still hard sometimes to think about the significance of this small story because it runs deep. I’m honored to have this precious instrument in my own home (thanks fam for letting me “borrow” it), and am so thankful for the redemption it represents.
