Music saves lives, and my piano teacher is evidence.
During World War 2, a Jewish family was imprisoned in a labor camp with seemingly no way of escape. The family had recently been deported from their home in Latvia, and the father of the family had forgone bringing clothes and water in exchange for piano books. “You can buy clothes and food anywhere,” he proclaimed, “But knowledge is priceless.”
My piano teacher spent much of her childhood in that labor camp, but she recalls that at that young age, she was blissfully ignorant of the dire situation around her. Her parents shielded her from the horrors of their situation, and she remembered her childhood as a happy one. She laughed aloud when she told us about the time she sat in a potted plant – and it turned out that the plant was a nest full of fire ants! Figuratively and literally, she had ants in her pants. She ran back home, screaming, crying, and very, very itchy.
My piano teacher’s father was a great pianist. He trained his daughter in piano and violin at a very young age, and he was a very strict teacher, no matter if his student was his very own daughter. At the labor camp, he started a choir, and he was an incredible instructor. Over the years, word of the choir in the labor camp spread, until one day, he received a request from a university music teacher to perform in the United States.
The choir was the first to escape that labor camp, and they may have been the only ones to do so. The American teacher sponsored all the choir members – including my piano teacher and her family – to stay in the United States.
From there, my piano teacher’s history is a bit fuzzy. I know that she was a great pianist, so great that she played in the famed halls of Carnegie Hall (she recalls playing a more modern piece, one that didn’t really have a succinct melody, so much so that later, the concert-goers would ask her if she had hit a couple wrong notes.) What I know of my piano teacher from there is quite self-centric; in my mind, her existence begins with mine. She has taught piano to hundreds of children in my hometown. Positions in her studio are highly sought after, and they are not a guarantee. If my teacher deemed a student unfit for her lessons, she would ask them not to come back.
My father first heard of Ms. Skriblis from a friend. Ms. Skriblis is famed for her deep, commanding voice. The first time he called her, he sheepishly thought that she was a man.
Up until my lessons with Ms. Skriblis, I had been taking piano lessons with a teacher at my daycare. The lessons were simple and careless; my daycare piano teacher probably cared about my piano playing as much as I did, which is not much, to say the least.
I remember my first lesson with Ms. Skriblis being a long one. At age 6, a 45-minute lesson felt like an eternity. I diligently played the pieces I had been learning at the time – it was probably Hot Cross Buns or something. My mother sat on a chair on my left, and Ms. Skriblis towered over me on my right. Ms. Skriblis gave me a few pointers, listed some new books to buy, and told me that she would see me again the next week.
I don’t remember much from that lesson, but I do remember not wanting to go back. My mom is pretty bad with directions, and on the second week, I slyly pointed her to the wrong house, even though I very much remembered what the correct house looked like. Much to my own dread, after a couple wrong turns, my mom proudly found the correct house and ushered me inside.
There are many things to know about Ms. Skriblis, but if I could only describe her personality in one word, I would say that she was a firecracker. Ms. Skriblis was not a person that you met and forgot. She had a magnetic personality. She was quite memorable, but just as humble; telling her this would most likely have embarrassed her greatly.
When I was writing this for the first time, I found myself repeatedly typing the word ‘has’. Ms. Skriblis has a magnetic personality. Ms. Skriblis has a boisterous laugh. To be honest, having to write the word ‘had’ feels like a dagger. It’s a painful reminder that Ms. Skriblis must now be simplified to a ‘was’ instead of an ‘is’; she ‘had’ things while just a week ago, it was grammatically correct to use the word ‘has’.
I don’t know why this little letter change – the ‘s’ in ‘has’ to a ‘d’, present tense to past tense – has such a profound impact on me. Physically, it’s quite miniscule. But I hate writing about her like she is in the past because it still feels as if she is very, very much in the present. She is the person that inspires me. She is one of the people that raised me. She is all the brightness and light in this world, and she is a physical embodiment of sunshine, bliss, excitement, morality, humbleness, and joy.
Over the years, Ms. Skriblis became much more than a piano teacher to my sister and me. My parents immigrated to America before I was born, and we have no relatives in this country outside of our nuclear family. Growing up, my sister and I saw our distant relatives once a year in China at most, and since then, we haven’t seen them in 11 years. All my sister and I had was my dad, my mom, our best friend’s parents, and Ms. Skriblis. We honestly felt closer to her than we did to our blood relatives.
Ms. Skriblis was stern when we were immature, but she also celebrate all our successes as excitedly as our own parents did. As my sister and I aged out of her piano program, we continued to keep in touch with her. We had seasonal tea parties at her house, where my sister, my mom, and I would bring flowers and food and sit around a table with her and discuss her current students, my sister and I’s career aspirations, politics, history, and more. The last time we saw her was at the beginning of this past summer. We had offered to have the next tea party at our house, and she was quite excited about it.
“It’s a long drive,” we warned.
She brushed off our concerns and said that she was very excited to see our home.
There’s a quote in John Green’s ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ that is forever burned in my memory: Funerals are more for the living than the dead.
To be honest, I’ve never been to a funeral. I have also never been to a wedding. I don’t have any relatives outside of my mom and dad in America, so those events were a rarity. Loss was such a stranger to me that I had never even experienced the death of a pet. As a result, over the years, death, in its ambiguity, has fascinated me.
I have tried to understand death like it is a disease. I read memoirs about authors who have experienced the death of a close friend or family member just to learn a bit more about what it’s like. I think that Joan Didion, in her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, describes the phenomenon of death best:
"Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss ... In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be “healing” … We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.”
Up until this point, death had evaded me. Some may call me lucky. Indeed, in Chinese culture, death is an omen, and children are shielded from it, and it is uncommon to bring your child to a funeral. My father once explained to me that he never got a family pet because he didn’t want my sister and I to suffer when it died.
Death is an interesting stranger. I had never met them, but I knew of its existence, and I knew that our meeting was inevitable. But it was the After that I was unsure of: having never experienced a friendship like Death, would I ever understand them? Or would I forever live in a daze after our first outing, perpetually confused and miserable?
In the background of my mind, I feared for the Day. I feared for the Day where a person close to me would pass away and I, equally a stranger to death as death is to me, would be wholly unready and destroyed.
I guess yesterday was the Day.
We knew that Ms. Skriblis’ time was dwindling; it was evident in her rasps for breath, the slowness in her walk, and the shake in her hands. Sometimes, coming home from tea parties with her, I tried to imagine a world without her in it. I couldn’t, and then I decided that I was being psychotic for even attempting to do so.
Yesterday was the Day and today is the continuation of the Day. It feels as if I have crossed some bridge that I didn’t agree to. Just a few days ago, I lived in a world that she inhabited. Now, I am in one where she is not.
I don’t know a world without her in it, but now, I guess that I must learn. I don’t like this world very much, and I’d very much like to go back to where we were. It is a great pain to know that there are no more tea parties with her. There are a lot of questions that I should have asked, but we got too wrapped up in talking about politics or something. I should have asked, what college did you go to? What kinds of friends did you have? Who did you date? What jobs did you work? What was raising your child like? What was your wedding day like? What did it feel like to play in Carnegie Hall? Were you nervous or scared? I can’t imagine you being nervous or scared.
Even though it’s selfish, I wish I had a few more minutes to update her as well. I signed a job in Boston post-grad! I had the worst summer at my internship, and you would have hollered hearing about it. Senior year has been so fun, and my friends are so amazing.
To be honest, Ms. Skriblis’ life would not have changed if she knew these things, but I think it’s the comfort of telling her my successes that makes me want to update her so badly.
The day after my piano teacher passed, my roommates bought me flowers. They were incredibly kind for doing so. There’s a glass vase of roses on my desk with a letter that says ‘Deepest Condolences’. I didn’t know that there was etiquette for the death of a loved one: my friends and I have never really experienced such a thing, especially my friends that are second-generation Asian Americans like me with no one else but their nuclear family close by. I was very grateful for the gesture, but it feels kind of weird to be receiving flowers when someone else died. All I did was cry and mope, and for some reason, that earned me a jar of flowers.
The flowers are beautiful, but they also serve as a reminder of what’s happening. The flowers feel very symbolic somehow … they feel like proof that you passed. I don’t like them very much, to be honest, but I would never throw them away. You deserve the flowers a lot more than I do.
I am trying not to make your death about myself. I am trying not to weep and wallow too much, because I know you wouldn’t have liked it. You would have said, “What’s the big deal? We had a lot of time together already! There are more important things to worry about – go do your homework or something.”
There is no funeral, and I know this was at your request. I’m sure your sister argued with you about it, but I’m also sure that you were firm in your answer. You are one of the humblest people that I know, and you would have been repulsed by the idea of a day of people sharing stories and remembering you.
You once told my mother that you knew your death would be a small subject; a small blip; a small pause before everything returns to normal. Incredibly down to earth and forever humble, you would have liked nothing more than for people to move on with their lives, whether they remembered you or not.
It’s been hard to play the piano these past two years. My roommates and I could never afford a piano, even the cheapest kind. A week after the Day, I decided to play the piano in your memory.
The only free piano that I could find was on my college campus. There’s a floor above the dining hall dedicated to studying, and it also has a computer lab and an art studio. In the corner is an old wooden piano. It doesn’t even have a proper piano chair – someone put a plastic sitting chair in front of it. Though the piano is small, it is also loud: so loud that anyone sitting in a 100-foot radius can hear every note that is being played.
I hate playing in front of others. This hatred stems from when I was younger: I was too lazy to memorize the notes before recitals, and I would instead rely on motor memory. Unsurprisingly, I forgot my pieces at quite a few recitals. Forgetting your piece at a competition is especially excruciating. The dread of the notes trickling away from your fingers and fading into silence is one that I will never forget. The burn of the stares from the audience makes forgetting your piece feel like a cardinal sin. It got so bad that in my younger years, even seeing a piano would trigger my anxiety.
Well, no bother. I’m 21 now, and the least that I could do in your memory was to play some goddamn piano.
I sat my iPad down on the music holder. The chair was way too low from the piano, and of course, it wasn’t adjustable like it should have been. I started a shaky rendition of a Chopin waltz. I was painfully aware of all the other students around me. I winced at every wrong note, feeling like my playing sounded jarred and jagged and it was ruining the study time of the other students. My wrists were sore from how low I was sitting, and I had to twist my fingers to cover all the keys.
For my next piece, I sat on one leg to be at level with the piano, and finally, playing that piano did not feel like gymnastics. I started playing Butterfly Lovers, a Chinese piece that is usually played by an orchestra. Someone posted a piano version on Musescore.com, and it is my absolute favorite piece to play. Butterfly Lovers sounds like a musical translation of the flight of a butterfly: there's a trickle of notes that sound just like a flutter of wings, and there's also measures that soar through the air just as if you were on the back of a butterfly.
While playing Butterfly Lovers, I could finally feel myself getting lost in the music. The beautiful thing about playing a musical instrument is that it allows you to interact with the world in a way that is entirely different from the usual existence. The feeling is hard to describe in words ... it could probably only be translated through music.
I shed my worries about the other students around me. Throughout the course of the piece, a couple of people tapped me to tell me how lovely the piece was. A campus worker said, “You play so beautifully.” I wish I could have replied, “I learned it from Ms. Skriblis.”
For the last piece of my mini recital, I played the Forrest Gump theme song. Suddenly, in the middle of the piece, tears started to fall - big, pearly drops that streamed down my face and blurred my vision. I had to blink them away quickly to not miss a measure. Despite how crazy I must have looked, it felt intensely cathartic to play the piano in your memory. It felt as if your spirit was with me, listening intently.
Every time I play piano, I think of you, and it is so comforting.
A couple months after Ms. Skriblis' passing, I had a small vacation in Europe. I visited my college friends who were studying abroad before meeting up with my family in Italy. En route to Italy, I had a layover in Nice, France. As I was wandering through the crowded airport, searching for my gate, I stumbled upon a bright red piano. Had the piano been any other shade than bright red, I would have completely walked past it. It was one of those half pianos with a flat backing that is perpendicular to the ground, and it was pushed against a wall and squeezed between a kiosk for coffee and a group of chairs in front of a gate.
I put my bag down next to the piano and sat down on the piano chair. Ever since you passed, I have made an effort to play the piano whenever I come across one. It feels like a way of honoring you, and I have always been a sucker for public displays of music.
I pulled out my iPad and opened the sheet music downloaded on it. I decided that my first piece would be the theme song from Forrest Gump – it’s easy and light, perfect for an airport terminal. The keys were smooth and easy as I started playing the first chords. At home, my piano has firm keys that require a little more effort when you push down on them. It’s a lot more fun when the keys feel like air.
What buskers don’t tell you is that playing music in public is hard. Sure, you are background noise, but that’s just the thing – noise is either pleasurable or a nuisance. You can either provide a brief period of respite or you can be a bother and make others wish you’d get off that piano bench. And maybe that’s why I chose the Forrest Gump theme song – it’s a cop out; an easy song that everyone would enjoy.
As I started playing, an older man walked up to the piano to listen. He stood closely behind me, peering over my shoulder and squinting at my iPad. At this point, I was a page in. Playing the piano for hundreds in an airport is scary enough; having a random man scrutinizing your playing almost sent me into cardiac arrest. My hands shook and I missed a few keys. Sweat prickled under my brow. Much to my surprise, however, as I continued playing, the man followed along with the notes on my iPad and began turning the electronic sheet music pages for me.
You probably think that this story will end with me playing the rest of the piece in a flourish and the people in the airport terminal greeting me with a thunder of applause - maybe even a standing ovation. Quite the opposite, actually: I played the last chord one octave lower than it should have been, and the man harumphed. I sheepishly let the wrong chord trail out into the air, and I wondered if I was worthy of taking up the ear space of so many.
Despite the wrong chord, the man nodded in satisfaction. “Beautiful,” he said with a French accent. I thanked him for flipping the pages. “Do you want to play?” I asked.
He shook his head quickly. “No, no,” he scoffed. “You play. Play something else.”
“Okay.” I quickly browsed through my iPad. “I’ll play a Chinese song.”
“Chinese song?” He nodded again. “Good, good. Play.”
I pulled up Butterfly Lovers on my iPad, and I began to play.
After a few seconds, the man had to go to his gate. “I listen from up there,” he said, gesturing upstairs, then left with a wave.
I kept playing the piece, and soon after, a young boy skipped up to the piano and began to dance along to the music. It seemed like he was emulating some sort of interpretive, modern dance - there was a lot of arm flailing and jumping. After the piece, I let the boy play his own composition of banging random keys on the piano.
Then, the piano was mine again. I started playing the theme song from Howl’s Moving Castle. Of course, the tears were not a stranger, but this time, I welcomed them with open arms.
After some time, a small crowd began to form around me. They listened to me stumble through Howl’s Moving Castle (I was very unprepared and out of practice), and after I finally reached the final note, a man approached me. I cockily thought he was going to tell me that I played the piece very beautifully and that he was very impressed.
Instead, he asked, “May I have a turn on the piano? I board my flight pretty soon.”
I released the piano to him and scrambled up the escalator to my gate. My cheeks were flushed, and every nerve felt so alive. The good thing about playing piano in airports is that you will never encounter the other individuals at the airport ever again, so even if you incredibly fail, you can hurry onto your plane and pretend it never happened. Playing that bright red piano was terrifying, but I was incredibly happy that I did so.
As the plane ascended into the clouds, I thought back to the kind old man that flipped the sheet music for me and the little boy that danced to my piano playing. I thought of the gracious campus worker and of course, I thought of you.
My father is a very analytical man. He likes to think of everything in a logical sequence, and I think I have inherited this trait from him. Once, during a piano lesson, I said: “Piano is simple – if you think about it, it’s just simply pressing some keys.”
Ms. Skriblis was very cross when I said this. “Nonsense,” she said. “Piano is so much more than pressing keys.” My ears turned hot with embarrassment. I thought I had come up with some new theory to simplify the instrument, but in reality, it was a great insult. “Merely pressing keys does not make music,” Ms. Skriblis scolded.
And she was right. Music saved Ms. Skriblis’ life and many others. Though Ms. Skriblis is no longer with us, I'm indebted to music as well, because without it, I would have never been able to meet her and many others.
Despite my sadness, I think that grief is a beautiful thing, because it is evidence of a beautiful relationship. For this amount of sadness, we must have loved each other very deeply.
I am a strong believer that death is what gives life meaning. Like day and night, the two cannot coexist without each other. Without death, life is just an existence. Finiteness forces us to appreciate the people around us, so much so that we stress when wrinkles appear, we buy them gifts that we think they would love, we learn as much about them as we can while they are here, and we are incredibly sad when they are gone.
The Day was inevitable, but what comforts me is that you most definitely knew how much you were loved and cherished. It’s evident in the numerous letters and gifts you received over the years and the palpable adoration from your students and their parents. I am so grateful to have known you, and this sadness is nothing but a small price to pay.
Music saves lives, and it also brings us together. I am so thankful that it brought me to you.
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