Heartstrings
It is Sunday morning, and I am up too early—again—awakened by unpleasant dreams related to him, but he wasn’t in them. He was gone in all of them, and other people in his life were featured players. I go to sleep hoping to dream of him near and alive, a respite from reality, but he hasn’t come to me that way yet. I dreamed I was in a church, maybe at his funeral (which wouldn’t have happened in a church, and didn’t), maybe just at Mass. I am at one end of a long pew, and at the other end sit his daughter and his granddaughter. I know they are there, but there are so many people between us, and I don’t know how to talk to her. When everyone gets up for communion, I step out after briefly considering going up for a blessing, but that’s the Episcopalians; his daughter is Catholic, and I decide against it. It’s been uncountable years since my last confession, and there’s that whole atheist thing. When I come back, she is getting the baby settled in the stroller. They are both wearing white. I have to walk right past her to get back to my seat at the other end, and I look at her, but can say nothing. I awake from the dream, and turn over to another 45 minutes of similar dreams I cannot remember, but am quite sure that the theme was similar, and I decide staying in bed is not going to work. Being up before 8 a.m. on a weekend has never been my M.O., but it has been for the last 3 weeks.
I get up and talk to E, check e-mail, check everyone’s blogs, eat breakfast, and read the paper, then I get V down from the wall. A series of 3 pictures of A now hangs between her and R. V needs new strings, and I want the new ones to have time to finish stretching before I have to go to this wedding in just less than 2 weeks. I’m afraid to go and perform. As if there weren’t enough pressure, playing in front of 200 people, the biggest crowd I’ve ever played for, most of whom I don’t know, some of them my own semi-estranged family who’ve never heard me play live, at an important event I don’t want to fuck up, I fear that the playing of the guitar, playing the song he never got to hear, the song I recorded the day he died before I had reason to worry, and/or hearing the bride and groom pledge their forever love will just send me around the bend. I have told her what happened to my “beloved friend,” and that I may not be up to it, and both she and the groom were understanding. But I don’t want to disappoint…not them, not me, not my family, not A, who was so excited they’d finally get to hear me. I have no ability to predict what I’m going to feel at any given moment these days. Anything can send me reeling.
So I sit on my office floor, calmly unwinding strings and replacing them, pushing in bridge pins and snipping the ends off at the head, setting aside the old strings to add to my collection. I’m not sure why I’m collecting them, but I am. I’m listening to A’s mixed CD, and find something prophetic in every song he chose. There is calm these last few days, but the sadness is always there, like the lead apron you wear at the dentist: it doesn’t incapacitate you (not every time, anyway), but its weight is there and undeniable, and it slows you down. I have never picked up a guitar without A on my mind, usually grateful to him that I can play. That will not change, and that’s why it’s hard to pick it up now. He played V many times, and I’m very glad. He played all my girls except T, who’s new, but he had T’s twin for his own. It is my habit, or maybe my ritual, to give V a good cleaning and polishing every time I change her strings, adjust her as needed, and observe the new dings I’ve put into her since last time. Today I dinged her with the framing square I use to check her neck alignment. That’s something I would’ve confessed to A in an e-mail. It is Vera’s sad fate to be owned and loved by a klutz, and she’s well on her way to having “character” to rival Willie Nelson’s guitar.
As I was buffing the polish off, I got to the strap button he’d put in for me. The day he did it, he went out to his shop to get his tools on the last day I was in town, and came back and I watched him do it. It was probably the least of the things he could do as a cabinetmaker, put this little screw and button into the guitar, but I watched, mesmerized. It was how he did it that was so fascinating. He was totally focused, the Zen woodworker, and I could see he knew exactly what he was doing, in his bones and because of long years of practice. I may as well not have been in the room; he was in his element. His hands were sure, strong, and yet so gentle. He took such care as he tapped the heel with an awl, and then carefully drilled a pilot hole into the wood, then hand screwed the button in. I was thrilled, by the upgrade to my guitar, and by the man himself. I always appreciated these things that he just took for granted. He always said “I’m just me,” never understanding the immense appeal of “just him.” Part of his charm, I suppose.
I told him recently how much that impressed me as we discussed putting a strap button on T, and whether he thought I could do it, or if I should wait and let a pro (meaning him) do it. He advised against it, as a 12-string is head-heavy, and I was better off putting the strap at the head for balance. He also said that despite the fact that he knew what he was doing, he was still drilling into a guitar, and he approached it with extreme respect and care. It always seemed to me that he approached the world with extreme respect and care, but of course, guitars deserved extra tenderness.
Tuesday is my Nylon Strings Anniversary, which means I’ve been playing for 2 years. A and I would’ve celebrated that; he was so proud that I was playing. I know, and told him many times, I wouldn’t be if not for him. He’s the one that told me to get the nylon strings, and has been there to encourage me, instruct me, and applaud me every step of the way. I know I don’t feel like celebrating without my guitar guru. It is the first in what I’m sure will be a long line of anniversaries that will only compound the pain of missing him.
Lunch time came, and E warmed up leftover cheeseburgers for us, and then asked if I’d be up for a post-lunch snuggle. I was, and when he wrapped his arms around me, I cried for the tenderness and the safety I felt. He fell asleep, but I could not. I stared at the whirring ceiling fan, my thoughts spinning in time with it. And I considered how grateful I was to hear him breathing.