A true story about my great grandmother, Lora, who we affectionately called Old Mom, died two months after I turned three years old. I was at my grandmother's house the morning that the nice men brought Old Mom out of the blue bedroom that she stayed in. I remember her fondly, a sweet, very old lady who would crack jokes when her body's age betrayed her. One morning, not long before she died, she jabbed her cheek with her fork. I must have had a worried expression because she joked that she "missed her mouth again." I remember giggling but not quite forgetting.
They wheeled out a gurney, a white sheet draped over what I knew even then was my Old Mom. Just as the nice men passed me and smiled, Old Mom's hand slid out from the sheet and swung toward my. Her frail hand stretched out with her palm upward. I remember not being scared or even confused. I knew that my Old Mom was dead. The nice men put her hand up under the sheet and continued taking her out to the ambulance. I don't remember much about the funeral, I was just barely 3 years old after all, but that wouldn't be the last I would see my great-grandfather.
My sister, Christina, was three years older than me, and and six years old when we lost Old Mom. They were much closer than I had been with her, and she was Christina's inspiration for wanting to learn to play the piano. My mother had inherited Old Mom's organ, and though it was nearly 100 years old, it still sounded beautiful under the fingers of someone that knew how to play it. One morning, a couple of years after Old Mom had died, Christina was awakened by the sound of that organ. Just a single key being played over and over on the puffs of air that were being pumped by the foot pedals. Christina got up from her bed that summer morning, with the bright morning sun beaming into the front windows of our home, she made her way down the hallway to our living room. The tune that the organ played was getting louder the closer she got, and then as she entered she saw no one sitting at the organ. The key stopped being pressed and the organ became silent, with only the last remnants of air leaving it's pipes and sighing into silence. My mother would scold Christina for playing on the organ so early in the morning and waking her up, but she knew who it really was, and she would soon start taking piano lessons so that she could carry on playing for Old Mom.
Years later, I would see Old Mom again, but that's a story for another time.
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