Sandra, my stepmother, threw away my late mother’s piano as if it were garbage the day she moved in. “I won’t keep another woman’s leftovers in MY house,” she grumbled. At the age of 14, I had the impression that our house was being torn up.
My dad’s response was even more painful.
He didn’t dispute. He didn’t stop her. He simply stood silently.
It made me despise him. For years, I harbored that animosity because I believed his silence indicated he had put her before my mother’s memory. It was like being betrayed.
My father died nine years later.
I was stripping the bed while going through his belongings when I spotted something strange—like an unnatural lump—inside his pillow. I reached inside and took out a faded velvet pouch that was stitched with my mother’s name. My heart began to race. Like he never intended for anyone to find it until they really looked, it had been buried deep.
I unfastened it, my hands trembling.
There were a few piano keys within, ebony and ivory, worn smooth by years of usage. I went cold. They were saved by him. He must have secretly pried them loose before the piano was taken away.
Then, between the keys, I noticed a folded piece of yellowed paper.
I opened it up and read the words that made all the difference:
I was the recipient of the letter.
He acknowledged in his writing that I detested him. He went on to say that my mother had made him swear not to let her memories rule my life before she passed away. She feared that I would get mired in grief, as she had witnessed in her own family. Even if I had to blame him, she wanted me to survive.
He acknowledged that he didn’t argue with Sandra about the piano because he didn’t care, but rather because he was making a feeble and awkward effort to honor that commitment. He kept the keys, though, because he couldn’t let my mother go entirely. He went so far as to describe them: the notes she held when she was pondering, the ones she always began on.
He then expressed regret for the most painful aspect.
He claimed that keeping quiet was a mistake. that he ought to have been honest with me and given me the freedom to decide what I should keep and what I should let go. He requested me to play something for her one day and signed it simply, “Dad.”
For what seemed like hours, I sat on the bedroom floor, holding onto those keys until they made marks on my hands. I had assumed that his quiet meant he no longer loved her.
But because he believed it was how love and protection should be shown, he had carried her by himself, discreetly, and quietly.
I purchased a used upright piano last month. Not very fancy. However, I asked someone to swap out some of its keys for those from that velvet pouch. My fingers now fall where hers used to when I sit down to play.
I still haven’t forgiven my stepmother completely.
But my father? I believe I finally comprehend him. Because love doesn’t always seem like a major battle.
At times, it appears to be sacrifice, like a few piano keys concealed behind a pillow, waiting to be discovered at the ideal time.
