She Still Plays

When you think about the science of playing the piano, your brain translating black marks on paper so the left part of your brain can tell the muscles of the right hand to move the fingers and push black and white keys in a rhythm to make music, it’s amazing.  

When I watch Marty sit at the piano, her arm mottled from medication, her right hand poised over the piano keys, her eyes intent on the music, her brain slowly calculating and making the complicated connection of the marks on the page to the keys on the piano, I am amazed..

The piano has always been a refuge for Marty.  A place to be an artist, a place to pound out frustrations, a place where she belonged, a place to bring people around her to sing or to simply listen.  The piano was the catalyst for recovery, the piano continues to be a test and exercise for her broken brain.

There was a time when Marty played and practiced the piano almost daily.  When we lived in Hillsboro she played for the community college’s choir.  Her hands would basically float across the key board and she could take a staid traditional hymn and rock it into a toe tapping gospel rendition in her head.  She once told me she cheated because she converted a lot of the notes into chords…..which to me seems pretty complicated but she played a lot and played well.

 

While her mind is compromised and her right hand is halting her understanding of the music is still there.  The brain is sometimes slow to translate the spots on the page to her hand, but she knows exactly what the spots mean, an F sharp, a C chord, a flat, an eighth note.  

The translation is stilted, at times there is hesitation in the playing, at other times she is as fluid with her right hand moving across the ivory keys as she ever was.  She occasionally plays the wrong note and she grimaces just a bit as the disharmony is apparent, but she keeps reading the music, she keeps playing the notes looking for the sharps and the flats and the rhythm of the music.

It’s worth the time to watch her eyes and to see her intensity as she reads the music.  I ask her if it comes easy, she says not at all.  She has to strain, she has to consciously act to read the notes and play the music, it’s not instinct, it’s not simply intuitive, it’s her broken brain translating a process she has always loved.

If you have just met Marty and hadn't had the chance to get to know her before the strokes you immediately develop an opinion of what she can do now and you see and believe that she is limited by the traumatic brain injuries.  If you watch her play the piano you form a different opinion of this woman who has been irrevocably changed, but not broken, by strokes.  Watching her play the piano you see someone who is different.

I think when she sits in front of the piano, her right foot on one of the pedals, her right hand hovering over the keys, her gaze on the familiar notes she gets lost in the music and she forgets for a brief time the strokes, her disease and her disability.  

I think when she gets lost in playing the music she feels free again, she feels in charge, her self- worth rises and she smiles.

I love to see her play.

Thirty Seven Year Old Promises

January 3^rd, 37 years ago we married.  We stood at the front of the First Presbyterian Church of Dalhart Texas and plighted our troth (love that phrase….how many times can you say “plighted your troth”).

It was cold, it was clear, the sky was blue.  Marty reminded me today that it was 1 p.m. on that first Saturday in January when we did that troth thing. 

I don’t really remember standing at the front of the church; I don’t really remember saying the words.  We have pictures that prove we stood there and walked the aisle so I know I did, I know we did, but I don’t remember the specifics at all, except through the pictures. 

I do know what we said; I know we promised things, important things, deep things.  I know, on the whole, for these 37 years we have kept those promises, in health and even in sickness. 

I can’t say for sure I would have made those promises had I known the future.  I can’t say I would have stood there, irrevocably confident in the future, if I had been able to see 30 years in the future.  I don’t know for certain I would have been able to promise the whole sickness and health thing if I had known, 30 years later,  Marty would slump over, her face slack, without muscle control, unable to speak, broken by the second stroke.  I just can’t say if I would have stood there and promised my faith and love to someone who would break in such a terrible way.

Today, on this day, we went to see Les Miserables.  Marty loves musical theater and Les Mis is one of her favorites.  I love it too and they have done an excellent job with this film.   If memory serves Marty first saw Les Mis in Houston with our daughter Erin.  I apparently was too busy being a captain of industry to go.  I first saw it in London with Marty, Matt and Erin.  I was moved then, I was moved again today, for a lot of reasons.

I have always loved the music, it feels so lyrical, it builds emotion throughout the production.  Marty loved the music and the words.  The words, the ideas behind the words moved her.  

The movie, like the play, climaxes as all of the intertwined main characters come together, as Valjean plaintively tells Cossette in music how she had brought him to God, how she had taught him to love and “to love another person is to see the face of God”, I cried again, just like I did the first time I heard the song.  

Today it wasn’t  just the music and lyrics , it was more than that, it was also the memory of sitting with my Marty and holding her hand as tears drifted down her cheeks because of the those words. 

Those words meant a lot to her, “To love another person is to see the face of God.”  As I look back at our life I realize why those words tugged at her, those words closely defined her own thoughts about love….and about God.

Marty doesn’t cry anymore, a gift and a curse, mostly a curse.  She sat there with me and watched this very long movie dry eyed as I took my sweatshirt and dabbed my own eyes.  I believe, somewhere, somewhere deep in her soul, that part of her that loves and cherishes music, that part of her that loves and cherishes those words, that part of her that loves and cherishes me was just as moved today as she was the first time we saw Les Mis together.

It was right and fitting that on our 37^th anniversary we found ourselves sitting together, listening to this magic, together once again.  And yes, I cried again, not sobbing like a child, I cried man tears, wet cheeks and stuffed nose in the protective dark of a theater, with my broken wife.

If I had known the future, if I had realized the pain and trauma of the strokes, I can’t say for certain if I would have had the courage to stand there that cold day so many years ago and made promises.  I can say for certain that if I had seen the future and known how I would feel on this day I know for certain I would have said those words.

Locked Up

There is a very rare phenomenon known as anesthesia awareness, where under general anesthesia, during surgery, some patients wake up during the surgery and are aware of what is happening but because of the anesthesia can’t say anything to alert the medical staff that they are awake and aware.  I can’t even imagine how frightening, how totally helpless you would feel.

I think, for Marty, that’s kind of the way it is in her head because of the strokes. 

She sees things, she hears things, she understands things, she is aware of everything that goes on around her; her brain just can’t bridge all of those thoughts and ideas to her verbal center. She simply can’t put to voice the awareness and thoughts that are stuck in her brain.   For Marty, who had few thoughts that didn’t get voiced, who always expressed her opinions, who had a never ending supply of suggestions and ideas, it is torture to listen to the people around her and not be able to participate.

The other day Marty sat in front of the piano, eyes locked on the sheet music for “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”  Her right hand was resting on the ivory and black keys of the piano, not moving.  I sat to her left and watched as she sat there frozen, mentally processing, absorbing the notes on the paper in her brain and trying to then transmit those notes to her right hand.  She was stuck, she knew what she wanted to do, she just couldn’t initiate.

I sat there and said, “On your mark, get set, GO.”

Marty sat there, locked at the page, smiled and said, “Say it again.”

“On your mark, get set,” I paused, looked at her as she intently focused on the page, and said, “GO.”

She started to play, moving her hand across the piano keys with a skill that belies her disability, hitting the single notes, deciphering and fingering the chords, the music lifted from our piano, “Stars shining bright above you….”

Marty played haltingly through the song and then we moved to the next few songs as she worked her way through the myriad of notes, the flats, the sharps, the chords, the time, the tempo; a language foreign to me, one she has been fluent in for decades.

My mother taught me the notes, Every Good Boy Deserves All Good Favors, or something like that, many years ago.  I could correlate that to the keys on the piano but it makes for a very, very slow and stilted musical piece when you have to recite the “reminder” for every note you play.  The notes, the connection of those notes to the piano are rooted so deeply in Marty’s brain the strokes couldn’t erase them.

After she played the piano for a while I asked Marty if playing, if getting stuck in the process was frustrating.  

“Sure it is.”  She said.  “I know the notes, I know the fingering, I just can’t get my hand to move.”

It is the most frustrating part of her life, the most poignant, the most painful part of brain trauma for Marty.  I suspect she is not alone, to have words in you that you can’t get out, to have thoughts and feelings and no means to express them completely and accurately must be excruciating. So much of what Marty was, is still there, stuck, unable to be given voice, unable to be pulled out of her scarred brain.  

When there are distractions, when there are a lot of people having multiple conversations, when she is fatigued Marty’s brain, lets her down, it gets locked up, just like at the piano where she knows the notes, she instinctively knows the fingering, in her brain.  She can’t get the damn fingers moving in time, in tempo, with the grace and skill of the musician her brain knows her to be.  Just like the piano she can’t get the words from her brain to the tongue, her thoughts have no voice, like the notes on the page have no sound.

The brain is remarkably complicated.  It takes a tiny pin hole in a tiny blister in very small blood vessels to radically alter someone’s life forever.  Microscopic blood cells clotted together, reducing blood flow to parts of the brain can damage enough cells to make even the simplest of life’s tasks insurmountable.  Both of these tiny events conspired to damage enough of Marty’s brain to rob her of her voice, but they didn’t take who she is.

The brain can be remarkably resilient, finding new pathways, finding new ways to do some of life’s simplest tasks, or even some of life’s more complicated skills, like playing a piano.  Marty has never stopped her recovery.  Six years after the first stroke, five years after the second, I still see Marty finding new ways to perform old skills; I still see her brain trying to find ways to free her from the strokes.  

On her best days, without distraction, one-on-one, Marty can have a conversation about many things. On her best days Marty can still say things that she knows are funny, that she knows will make me laugh.   On her best days, when she feels good, has slept and is focused, Marty can talk to you and get some of those thoughts in her head into the universe.  She really had a marvelous brain.

Schooled by Marty ------ Again

Marty is a musician. Despite the trauma of the strokes she still possesses the soul and skills of a musician. Music is one of those things that connect her to the here and now, one of those things that bring Marty back to the surface through the fog of the brain assault.

Today as we finished lunch I sat there and looked at the piano and regretted my decision 40 years ago to refuse piano lessons. My mother wanted me to take lessons; she wanted me to at least learn some of the rudimentary musical skills one acquires when learning to play the piano. Being a boy child, a manly child I refused and she didn’t insist and it’s my loss.

My musical roots consist of learning to play the tenor saxophone for the 5th grade band. My saxophone career spanned four years. My dad played in the Texas A & M marching band back in the 40’s and I played his instrument. I learned notes, I learned counts, and I learned the tenor sax is not a chick magnet.

Today as I sat looking at the piano one of those little cartoon light bulbs popped over my head with an idea. I looked at Marty and said, “Could you teach me to play the piano?”

She looked at me, gagged just a little and said, “Yeah, if you can be patient.”

“I can be patient.” I said. “Do you think you could show me how to play?”

“I’ll try,” was her less than enthusiastic reply. The subject was tabled for the completion of lunch.

After lunch I started puttering around doing some odd chores and on a whim decided there was no time like the present. I pulled back the piano bench, pushed Marty’s chair just to the left of the piano, sat down and said, “Okay, tell me what to do.”

Clearing her throat Marty said, “Play a ‘C’ scale.”

As the brother to a piano player, the husband of a piano player, the father to a couple of piano players I have absorbed some piano intelligence by osmosis and listening to repetitious drills. I knew where to put my fingers, I even knew the fingering. I blistered the ‘C’ scale like Fort Worth’s own Van Cliburn.

I looked at Marty, looking for some positive reinforcement. She said, “Do it again.”

Okay, I did it again, looked over my left shoulder for some sense of appreciation of my skill and she says, “Do it again.”

“How many times?” I asked.

A short reply, “Until I tell you to stop.”

I started playing the scale, over and over again, varying the pace, the flow, even the fingering and she didn’t tell me to stop. I kept playing and looked at her. She was lost in a gaze looking at her song books as I continued to play the scales, afraid to stop.

My hand started to tire just a bit and I stopped and finally said, “When are you going to say stop?”

She said, “Stop.”

Great, I’m thinking, my wife has turned into the Sgt. Carter of piano teachers.

We diverged from single notes to chords. I played a “C” chord. That was okay, she told me to play a “D” chord and I kept hitting the wrong group of keys and Marty would say, “No, that’s e-minor, no, that’s F sharp.” I told you, it brings Marty to the surface, it amps-up her here and now, she didn’t even look to tell me I was on the wrong keys. She heard the chord and knew what it was and it wasn’t a “D” chord.

I must now confess I lied about being patient. I tried but I’m not a patient guy so I decided we should move on to real music. A John Denver song book just happened to be on the piano from the last time Marty had played for me. I immediately turned to “Annie’s Song”; one of the songs performed at our wedding 35 years ago, and opened it up. I asked Marty to tell me what the first note was and she said a “B”. I know a “B”. So I started, one hand, one finger playing “Annie’s Song”.

It’s important to know that “Annie’s Song” has only a sharp, the “C” note, and of course I kept missing that and missing plenty of other notes but eventually I made it through the first refrain of the song

Repetition is a key to learning a song, repetition requires patience, I have sworn to be patient, so I started playing the song again, then again, then again. Somehow I managed to mangle it in different ways every time, finding different notes to miss each time through the song. I didn’t turn to look at Sgt. Marty but I know, I have seen the pained expression of bad notes on her face before, I know she was scrunching up her nose and closing her eyes. I have seen that face.

I finally ended the song one last time, hitting the wrong key about four times in a row, sort of pecking at the key board. As the song writer sort of said, my senses were full, I was proud.

I wasn’t too sure Marty was still paying attention at all; she sometimes loses focus, especially when it gets a little boring. Then out of the blue she says, “Thank you.”

I’m touched, I know she remembers this song, I know she remembers the meaning to this song, I know she feels it, I know she relates it back to so many years ago when we pledged to be together forever regardless of sickness or health, I know she is thankful.

I turn to her and say, “You my dear are very welcome, so why are you saying thank you?”

She looked up from her deep thought and said, very simply, “For finally hitting the right note.”

It Touches Her Soul

Marty and I spent an Evening with John Denver yesterday afternoon. She really loves music, she always has. Marty taught me a deeper appreciation of music and she taught our children to love and enjoy all types of music. In her heart Marty is a musician, it’s in her soul and music still stirs emotions in her when nothing else really does.


I never had the same passion for music she did, I never had the same passion Marty did about anything. Because of Marty, I listened to music a lot. We either had something playing on the stereo, or a CD in the car or Marty was playing the piano. Marty is still something of a miracle on the piano, playing with just her right hand. The broken arm and the anti-seizure meds have made it even more of a miracle.

This is probably one area of Marty’s new normal I have neglected. So I made a vow and over the last couple of day we have spent part of the afternoon listening to the music we have listened to most of our lives. We were fans in college and after college; we made our children listen to our music on vacations and other trips and eventually made them fans too.

Marty and I started out with Linda Ronstadt, Heart like a Wheel from 1974. Marty can’t sing along anymore, the synapses in her brain simply don’t fire fast enough for her to keep up with the lyrics. She recognizes the songs, she knows the songs, you can see it in her eyes as she follows the songs, she just can’t sing with a CD anymore. That doesn’t stop me, I can’t sing on key, but I can sing loud and play air guitar or banjo with the best of them and my unbridled goofiness makes my bride smile.

As I sing, as I tap my feet, I watch Marty, and if you watch her very closely you can see her start to slowly let the music and the memories from the music start to tickle her mind. She starts to nod to the music, she starts to mouth some of the words, she starts to feel the music and it begins to be a part of her essence.

We rolled through the first tracks to “Faithless Love”, then moved to “Heart Like a Wheel”, one of Marty’s favorites and soon hit “Willin”, my personal favorite where you get to really belt out, “and if you give me weeeeed, whites and wine, and you show me a sign, …” I love that line.

The next day, yesterday, we sat and listened to all of John Denver’s, “An Evening with John Denver”, from 1975, college years for both of us; we were cool, but not too cool for John. This album, umh sorry, CD, holds great memories for both of us. I listen to these songs and can’t help but be carried back to our past, back to road trips, back to long ago friendships, back to seminal moments of our lives.

Grandma's Feather Bed

Again, I watch Marty, I ask her questions about the songs, I ask her if she remembers; she nods and says she remembers the songs, but not all of the words. We hear several songs but the real toe tapper here is “Grandma’s Feather Bed.” I sing along and it gets to the part where John sings, “I even kiss Aunt Lou, ooh,” and Marty is tracking along well enough to voice the “ooh” with me and John. Her smile as the song rolled along was priceless.

We then listen to “Annie’s Song.” Marty immediately identifies the song and says, “It’s a sad song.” I’m not entirely sure why she thinks it’s sad, it’s a great love song, it was played and sung at our wedding. Sometimes, I think, for Marty, evocative and emotional equals sad. I asked if she wanted me to move to the next song, and she said, “oh no, I like the song, Khaki sang it at our wedding.” Indeed she did.

Music is still a part of Marty, it always will be, and I want it to always be. She doesn’t often show the same depth of emotion and passion she did before the strokes, but it’s still there, running very deeply inside her. It just takes a little bit of effort and some old music to get to it and a practiced eye to see it. I’m still practicing.

That Little Therapeutic Piano

Marty has been a musician for as long as I have known her. At one time or another she developed a reasonable level of proficiency playing the baritone, the French horn, the guitar, banjo and piano. She loved playing the piano, took lessons in her youth and became quite accomplished. She also enjoyed singing. Over the years she sang with several choirs and she particularly relished singing alto with her small group chorus, The Common Souls, from our church.

One of our first major furniture purchases was a piano, a dark cherry Wurlitzer up-right that still has a place of honor in our living room. I remember Marty’s Father helping us with the down payment and negotiating with the salesman. He got him to throw in the sales tax. Marty played the piano for hours on end and I would often sit with her and sing while she played. I can't really carry a tune in a bucket but I can sing loud. Loud can be good, right?

After Marty’s first stroke she didn’t play much, she found it very hard to concentrate on the music and her right hand was still weak from the left sided stroke. After she had the 2nd stroke, music seemed like something that would be lost forever.

There are places where you go after a stroke, after the hospital, called sub acute care units. These are kind of half way houses after you no longer need a hospital but still need skilled nursing and therapy. We went to St. Catherine’s. Physical, occupational and speech therapy become the daily regimen for any recovering stroke patient. It’s an incredibly important part of a very long recovery process.

Marty would go to therapy three times a day. She was weak, confused and had very little stamina, but she went and she tried and we learned. It was incredibly hard to watch as she struggled with the simplest things, as she often struggled just to keep her head up and stay awake and aware.

Therapists are a wonderful lot and they see and work with people that are completely broken and trying to heal. Theirs is a very difficult job trying to get people to move beyond their current circumstances and make daily progress. Sometimes, I think, I saw, after about two weeks and no significant progress everyone gets a bit discouraged and everyone is a bit inclined to lose a certain amount of hope. We got there; I saw that, I know the therapists got there.

Then one Saturday afternoon we found some hope. Our daughter Erin and our son Matt were so faithful and good to come see their Mom virtually every weekend and we needed help on the weekends. The days without therapy were incredibly long and both Marty and I needed the diversion.

That Saturday afternoon Erin took her Mom out of her room and to the central lounge. In the lounge were the requisite couches, overstuffed chairs, a large aquarium, a couple of tables and most importantly a very old upright piano someone had donated. Erin pushed her Mom in her wheelchair and sat her in front of the piano and opened up an old, generic hymnbook.

Marty’s left hand, left leg and parts of her left brain had been essentially rendered useless by this most recent stroke. But, somewhere in the recesses of that broken brain she recognized the notes on the page of the old hymnal, raised her good right arm, put her good right foot on the pedal and slowly, haltingly started to play. It was slow, broken with missed sharps and flats at first, but slowly, surely the music began to smooth out and the right notes and chords started to kind of lift out of that old piano.

I watched Marty and Erin sitting at that piano and started to let myself feel just a little bit of hope as Erin turned the page and Marty began another hymn. A couple of the nurses saw Marty playing and came over to see if it was really her playing and not her daughter. Each one touched her back and mouthed the words, “Amazing”, as Marty continued to process the notes from the page to the keys on the piano, as Marty started her own process of healing.

It was one of those moments I keep in my heart and my mind. When the therapists heard our story of the piano, we all attacked therapy with a renewed sense of effort and hope.