My grandfather, my dad's dad, passed away two weeks ago at the age of 86. We traveled to Michigan to honor his life and say goodbye, though for me it was more a time of getting to know someone I'd only ever loved from a distance. Half a country separated me from him for my entire life, but my memories of him are still strong.
In the living room in the house where I grew up, a Chickering upright piano sits against the wall, waiting. Its ivory keys were rarely played by anyone in my house, but when Grandma and Grandpa came to visit the instrument, and our home, came alive. Grandpa spent hours sitting on the floor, tuning and tinkering and testing it out to get the pitch just right, making it sing. Then he would play and play. I remember the thundering sound that filled the house and the way his fingers danced across the keys, his hands spread wide and his eyes darting widely. I would stand beside him watching intently and when he finished, he would look up at me and grin.
My grandfather was the piano man. When he died, a friend sent well wishes to the family insisting that the music in heaven, lucky for them, had just improved. The wake took place in the funeral home where he had played the organ for thirty years in the city where, as a 21-year-old kid, he had filled in for the pianist of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He played and tuned and taught lessons across the city for his entire career, making music and supporting his family of seven.
When I knew him he was witty and active and warm, always jumping at the chance for a play on words, a brisk walk or an opportunity to tell us all how happy it made him to have us all together. Tears would fill his eyes and the words would catch in the back of his throat. He would bring his fist to his heart and stand there grinning through the tears, making me regret, every time, the distance that kept us from spending more time together.
I wasn't there when his mind started to go. It happened fast, or so it seemed. Five years from my last living memory of him and what fills the space between is a series of stories told to me secondhand. The world stopped making sense to him, his home and his family familiar but lost in a swirl of cognition and confusion. Perhaps I'm lucky. My last memories of him were really
him, at his best. Still, so much life happens between visits, across state lines and when we're busy doing other things. How much I have missed.
"It's a blessing," my grandmother repeated over and over as we moved from the wake to the service to the burial. He was simply finished living, had lived a good, long life and was ready to move on. It was the music, as we hugged each other and shook hands with strangers, as we prayed over him and put him in the ground, that made me not ready to let go.
A former student of his played violin at his funeral. A family friend played my grandfather's signature piano piece, Debussy's
Clair de Lune, before we left the church. A naval officer played Taps as we stood, motionless, in the cemetery. A chill ran through me with every note.
It's strange to say I'll miss him, his absence from my daily life nothing out of the ordinary, but I will. I'll keep expecting him to show up at family gatherings. I'll keep seeing him in the white haired, fast-paced men on the street. I'll keep waiting to see him again, waiting for the piano to sing. At least I know the music will be good when I get there.
Here's to you, Grandpa.
Listen to
Clair de Lune. 
