On this particular visit to Mother, she is peaceful and looks beautiful in a blue and white pinstripe shirt. Her hair is wavy with a beautiful sheen. She looks like Greta Garbo. On other days, her hair looks like Edvard Grieg.
But today, she is a movie star. I want the name of her hairdresser. Her eyes widen when she recognizes my familiar face. We exchange the first hellos and how are things and then settle back into silence. I begin to stroke her hand and move slowly onto her back and eventually stand behind her, running my hands through her hair, massaging her scalp. That feels good, doesn’t it? Very nice, she answers dreamily.
Back to silence.
It is coming up on lunch time but there is no lunch yet.
She agrees to a little walk. We walk around the loop, past the other rooms and out into the front hallway, along the glass walkway, looking at the rhododendrons and the sunshine. We’ll go to the chapel I think, up the elevator, down the second story glass walkway. As we walk, I sing Irving Berlin’s What’ll I Do? What a song. What’ll I do when you are far away and I am blue, what’ll I do? What’ll I do with just a photograph to tell my troubles to? When I’m along with only dreams of you that won’t come true, what’ll I do?
We walk along a glass hallway, Mother resting her arm in mine, me resting my hand on hers, the sun shining through the stained-glass windows. Look at the beautiful colors on the floor, Ma. She looks but doesn’t really see. We enter through the door into the chapel. I have no idea really why I’m leading her this way.
Then I see the organ. Music. That’s what we need. I sit Ma in the front pew and take a seat at the console. Ma watches. I fiddle around, find the power switch and Whoosh! the thing comes to life. Mother perks up. We smile big smiles at each other. I make a few pathetic attempts at typical organ-type things, very dirge-like. I don’t really know how to play the organ. I have no idea what I’m doing. I feel like The Great Foodini featured on one of our childhood 78’s - a megalomaniac who claims to be the world’s greatest magician, scientist, inventor, genius and everything else. (Remind you of anyone?) He says he’s going to fly to the moon! We kids knew the record by heart, especially when Foodini gets into the rocket ship, gets into trouble and screams to his wise and clever assistant, PINHEAD, LOOK OUT!! WE’RE GOING TO CRASH INTO A STARRRR!!!
I rummage around in the bench for some music – only a Mass booklet with little responsorial hymns and a few Christmas tunes. I play the single melody line of Once in Royal David’s City. No reaction from the peanut gallery.
I turn my rocket ship from the sacred to the profane, try a little Grieg (in tribute to Ma’s normal hairdo). Papillon, which I learned from Mrs. Chin in the ninth grade, is the only one I have under my fingers at all. When I was a kid, Mother used to play Ase’s Tod (Ase’s Death) from The Pier Gynt Suite, which always flooded me with sadness, a kind of peaceful sadness. Mother’s family grew up playing Grieg. Only recently, I was stunned to realize that Grieg composed Peer Gynt in 1875, not long before my grandmother’s birth.
Ase’s Tod, Paul Barton, piano
I move on to an old family favorite, Aura Lee. As the blackbird in the spring, ‘neath the willow tree; sat and piped I heard him sing, singing Aura Lee; Aura Lee, Aura Lee, maid of golden hair; sunshine came along with thee and swallows in the air. Mother’s eyes grow bright, meet mine. OK, I thought, let’s stay here in her memory banks. I try a few more old tunes, thankful for the chord progressions that Larry the Lounge Lizard taught me.
Then, from the organ bench in the quiet, reverential chapel, I begin to play and sing a song that I know, absolutely know, will put light in Mother’s eyes - The Whiffenpoof Song, a hymn to Yale. Dad was a day student from West Haven, member of the class of ‘34. No gathering around the Sullivan piano was ever complete without that song. Mother comes alive, sits rapt in the pew, singing with her eyes.
Gentlemen songsters off on a spree, doomed from here to eternity, God have mercy on such as we, baa baa baa.”
I wonder if God in his monstrance would object to our worship of The Whiffenpoofs. I decide not only would he approve but he probably went to Yale.
PS I recorded this one. It is at the beginning of the post. Hope you enjoy!
You hit a perfect balance, Kate, between the ache and the possibility when being with a loved one who may not be with us! At least for me. My dad would argue the "Man Upstairs" was a Harvard man. :)