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.

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.”

A Call and Response

“You are my sunshine.”

“My only sunshine.”

“You make me happy.”

“When skies are gray.”

A call and then a response; I would make the call; “you are my sunshine,” she would respond, “my only sunshine.”

She lay there in the bed, barely awake, barely alert, and barely conscious. She was only tenuously connected to the here and now. I didn’t know what she knew, what she understood, how connected she was. I was lost and didn’t know what else to say or do so I whispered in her ear, “you are my sunshine.”

I don’t know what I expected, I know what I hoped. I hoped for a response but I wasn’t sure I would get one. I wanted to know if she was connected enough, if there was enough cognitive functioning to recognize a song she had so often played. I wanted to know if her memory was working well enough to remember a song sung so many times.

Some of our best times were with Marty playing the piano and me sitting on the piano bench beside her. She played all kinds of songs but we mostly sang from a Reader’s Digest Book of Treasured Songs like, “You are my Sunshine”, “Side by Side”, “Down by the Old Mill Run”, and “Show Me the Way to Go Home” (her Dad’s favorite). We sang those songs countless times because I knew the melody and could stay on the melody while she sang harmony especially if I stuck a finger in my ear so I couldn’t hear Marty sing; otherwise I had to sing the same notes she did. I’m not a skilled choral voice. These were easy, fond memories I hoped were stuck in parts of her brain unaffected by the strokes.

It’s immediately what I reverted to when Marty was so sick from the 2nd stroke and laying in the ICU at Providence. It was my test for her cognition, it was my way of finding out what parts of her were still there, and if she knew I was there. I simply whispered in her ear, “You are my sunshine.” It was the best way I knew to tell her what she meant to me.

Day after day I would do the same thing. I would quietly call, “you are my sunshine,” she would respond in a faint, “my only sunshine” and we would continue the call and response all the way through the song, even through the pointedly poignant 2nd verse: “the other night dear, as I lay sleeping, I dreamed I held you in my arms, when I awoke dear, I was mistaken and I hung my head and cried.

Every time we did it, every time I got a response to my call I felt better, I felt connected, I felt it meant she was still there for me and she knew I was there for her.

We sing together today, not very well, but we sing. The strokes apparently robbed Marty of the fine vocal muscle tones needed to make a fine musical tone because we are off-key, at best. That’s all right, I don’t care, we still sing. She has taught me all of the words to “I Love You Truly” and that’s what invariably comes out when I say to her, “I love you.” Then we sing, a duet, completely off tune, completely out of sync, embarrassing all within ear shot, except us.

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.