Just a piece of wood
Some months back, I was in the process of replacing the strings and the bridge on my violin, although I’d bought a blank, not a finished bridge, and A volunteered to do his woodworking magic on it and size it for me, which he did, and sent it back.
I made several attempts to put it in, but it kept snapping out and flying across the room. I tried the old one and had the same problem. He made several suggestions, which I tried to no avail. I knew I was going to have to have a pro, or at least someone with 3 hands, put it in, if I ever got around to bringing it in. And then he died, and the violin sat there, broken, incomplete and unable to make music.
Just like me.
In the last couple weeks, that violin has become much like the picture mat obsession. The fact that it wasn’t done bothered me, as if somehow the incompletion of a project he and I worked on together was an affront to his memory. Don’t try to make sense of that. There isn’t any. But the feeling was there nonetheless.
When I brought it in last Saturday and explained what was wrong with it, the woman at the music shop informed me that the bridge had been cut backwards. This wasn’t A’s fault, which is what I told him when he worried he’d done it wrong and that was why I couldn’t get it set myself. The fault lay in a combination of my ignorance of bridges and the fact that the bridge company at some point in the last 20 years decided to stamp their bridges on the opposite side as my original. I was told I’d have to shell out the $4 for a new one, and I said that was fine.
It was fine because it was $4, and the bridge he cut for me would become a memento. It is, in fact, the only thing I have that he ever worked on in his professional capacity, and for that, it’s special to me. His woodworking ability amazed me, and while all his friends and family in California have pieces of furniture he made, I have nothing. Except this bridge.
I assumed they’d make the new one and toss the other 2 back in the case. It didn’t occur to me to ask that they do just that. I should have.
Because when I opened the case, I found one bridge, the original. The one he’d worked on wasn’t there, so I asked for it, only to be told the tech had thrown it away.
Thrown it away.
I said to the clerk, “That’s not cool,” but already the tears were brimming in my eyes, and I couldn’t say anything else. I just stared away, trying to hold it together while she finished up the transaction.. She offered to take $4 off the cost of the repair. I said “No, just charge me what the cost is.” $4 isn’t going to help this, and I couldn’t explain it to her if I tried. She took it off anyway, and I signed my slip and walked out in silence, the tears rolling once I got into the car.
“She couldn’t know,” said E. “Under any other circumstances, you wouldn’t have cared.”
“It was mine,” said I. “It came in with the violin. She should’ve thrown it back in the case.”
Why would she not throw away both? Why would she only throw out the one that meant anything to me? With the exception of the record BF1 gave me, there is not one thing that belonged to A that I didn’t already, and accidentally, have that has come to me. It is as if the universe has decided I am not supposed to get any tangible mementos of him, not the things he wanted me to have, not even things I gave him, or keep the ones I have, so complete is the lack on this point. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why, after losing him, I can’t just have one small thing that he touched, that he loved, to hold on to. Is it just too damn much to expect?
Yeah, it was a $4 piece of wood. But when you don’t have much left, it all means that much more.