When You Are Gone

I played the piano as a kid. I didn't really enjoy it at the time, but now, I'm glad I learned. I took lessons for about five years, and in that time, I went through a lot of songbooks. My dad had kept some of his books from his childhood, too, so we had quite a collection of music, all of which was older than me.

I can't remember if this particular song book came from my piano teacher or my dad, but it was a book of songs from older movies. There was "Evergreen," "Arthur's Theme," etc. I didn't know most of the songs or most of the movies, but I muddled through the music with my unsure fingers and managed to butcher almost every song in the book. I practiced dutifully, though, and eventually, I could bang out some of the tunes well enough to NOT cause ear bleeding in the other members of my family. I was proud.

One of my favorite songs to play was "Shadow of Your Smile," which I'd never heard but sounded pretty (in theory, at least). I played it more often than the others, eventually getting to the point where I could play it with some finesse (i.e., softer volume, gentler chords). I was still not great at it, but hey, it sounded good in my head.

I knew I'd finally gotten to a pretty decent ability, though, when my mom came in to listen to me play one day. I finished the song, and she said I'd done a good job. Then she said that the song reminded me of her dad. Grandpa Noisy died when I was about 4, so I didn't remember him all that well, but I was surprised that such a quiet song reminded her of him. She said, "Well, they played that song at his funeral."

Ouch. Now I felt bad. The whole time I'd been pounding on the keys, and I had no idea that the song I was demolishing was the one that played at my grandpa's funeral. I don't know which was worse for my mom: hearing me butcher the song, or hearing me play it well, when I got good enough to bring it to a quiet and poignant place. Either way, not a great thing.

She never told me to stop playing it, but I didn't play it much after that. I put it in the category of Old Spice aftershave... My mom couldn't stand Old Spice because Grandpa had worn it, so the smell of it reminded her too strongly of him. "Shadow of Your Smile" might have been the same way for her, so it spent the rest of my piano years mostly shelved. Eventually, I went to college and mostly stopped playing piano altogether, but I can still remember how that song sounded in our living room, and how sad my mom looked when she listened to it.