My wife and I sat at the end of his bed, not knowing it was the last time we would do this, and as he slept, we looked online for pianos.
We have a piano now. We do not have him.
We had to wait, though. The pandemic hit and it wasn’t really a good time to go to people’s house, to run our fingers down the keys and guess how many years it had been since it had last been played.
On the day it was delivered, the guys insisted on only taking cash… “you know, because of taxes”. He didn’t mind that we had to go to a bank around the corner to get it.
Just before leaving he mentioned how nice it must be to be out of Toronto ‘and away from those immigrants’.
Now, as I sit and look at our piano there is a lot going on in my mind. I think of my dad (he thought we should buy the baby grand… we opted for a freebie upright). I think of COVID and all our musician friends who don’t know if they’ll work again… whether we’ll work again. I think of that delivery man, about how I should really have insisted on a receipt and, much more importantly, how even in this quiet corner of the world the same racism that killed George Floyd lives.
When people, eventually, come into our house, all they’ll see is a piano. That’s what happens whenever we step into someone’s world. We might guess at a few of the things that are going on underneath the surface, but there’s a lot more going on.
It’s a good reminder of how to treat each other these days. Yes, there is a collective experience, but no… that doesn’t mean we know everything that is happening. I think this is especially true for those of us othering financial care and advice to people weathering the storm.
We are all in the same storm, but riding in very different boats.
It is more important than ever to listen to those who are suffering. We can’t just see the piano, it’s not just a piano.
