Chapter 54: OK, Where’s My Book?

Oh wait, I do have a book – in fact, four of them.  I had coffee with one of my dad’s friends last month.  She has known my parents for a long time and she gave me a book called “A Time to Grieve.”  It’s the first in a series of books published by Stephen Ministries, an organization for which she is a volunteer.  I found it surprisingly helpful. I don’t mean for that to sound so cynical, but it was rather surprising to feel some comfort through the words on a page when my whole world feels like it’s been turned upside down.  Apparently with Stephen Ministers, the proper protocol is for a volunteer to be in touch with a grieving person every few months in the first year, post-loss, to have a chat and hand out the next book.  But that’s not the way I do things. 😊  So I called my dad’s friend last night to ask if I could pick up the other three and read them.  I’m going to grab them tomorrow – let’s see how the grief training goes from here…ha.

Dad has gone to Portugal to spend some time with friends and just get away from everything here.  The beautiful photo of mom taken the night before is now framed and is visible from the front door, which is nice.  Other than that, we’ve removed all of mom’s things from the house (at his request) except for her teaching piano. Over the summer, dad had the piano moved from the basement – where mom used to have her office for lessons (which really hasn’t been used in years) – upstairs into the living room.  He wanted her to have easier access to play especially after we learned about how music can really stimulate the brain and help cognition for people living with dementia.

Which leads to the sad coincidence.  Dad doesn’t play the piano and I think looking at it everyday was upsetting so he asked me to sell it.  Well – turns out you really can’t give a piano away these days!  So, after a gruelling two months of trying to find a studio, school, community centre, church, or literally anywhere that would take it for free (following absolutely zero responses to online postings), a family friend asked if he could have it and I was so happy that the piano would continue to have a bit of a connection to mom by being in a friend’s house.  After his initial though to come over and haul it away in his truck, I successfully convinced him to hire a professional mover.  Turns out it was the exact same crew from the exact same company dad used just a few months ago.  The guys showed up and asked each other, “Hey – weren’t we just here?” I don’t know why that made me feel guilty about the manual labour, but it did, and I ended up blurting out, “Yeah – she recently died.”  Well, that was awkward.  To their credit, the movers were then very subdued  (solemn, even?) and just got the job done without any extra chit-chat…for which I was most grateful.  It was weirdly emotional to watch that piano leave our house.  I mean, I know it’s just a piano.  But still…it was like another piece of mom was leaving the house for the last time.

At least dad isn’t here for this – he’s back next week so this weekend, we’ll move the furniture back to the way it was before and hopefully (?) dad won’t really notice the change when he gets home.