Never Left Unsaid

It’s been twenty years since he died. I was eighteen.

I’d been working on a hard piece of piano music for the better part of the day, one of those that you need three hands to be able to play properly. I played until the ivories were warm from my touch, my knuckles ached and the muscles in my forearms seized, and I still couldn’t get it. In a moment of hopeless frustration, I slammed the lid down over the keys and growled something irascible.

He was the first to jump to my defense, against myself.

My father was a quiet man. He didn’t talk much, raised his voice very seldom, and the only time I ever heard him laugh out loud was watching Coyote and Road Runner cartoons. A big man, he had all my friends buffaloed, though I could never figure out what about him was so intimidating. He was not effusive, but he was quietly affectionate.

By the time I was in my teens, my father walked with a cane. He lived, quietly and patiently, with a constant pain that would have worn down any mountain. His soul was strong and willing, but his body gave out much sooner than he did.

The day of my tantrum at the piano it gave out all together.

“I’ll never learn to play this stupid thing!” I snarled, feeling very sorry for myself, that this one complicated piece didn’t come as easy to me as the other music that flowed out from my fingers with little effort.

“Now, honey,” he said, “You can do anything you set your mind to.”

A half hour later he was gone forever.

That simple, steadfast statement, his unwavering faith in my abilities, has rippled throughout every facet my life since then. I didn’t play the piano for two years after that night. Sitting down at the keys brought back such pain that I couldn’t stand it. Eventually, however, I couldn’t help but go back to something I loved, and I did play again.

Every time I play, and every time I come up against something that seems too hard, too complicated, too heavy to bear, I hear my father’s words again.

No word of kindness, no encouragement or vote of confidence should ever go unsaid. You never know whether it might be your last chance to say what needs to be said, and you never know how far your words may echo.