Harvey

The golden sun shone through the curtains and reflected off of all the keys on the piano. Harvey’s fingers glided over the ivory stones like an old pro as his music echoed magically throughout the home.

Other residents sat in the common room chairs reading their worn out mystery novels and year old letters from family members who no longer came to visit. Their tired fingers tapped the pages in rhythm with Harvey’s tune.

The tear from Harvey’s left eye also caught the sun and shimmered as closed his eyes and played the familiar song.

When Harvey wasn’t busy at the piano, he sat on the bench and talked. To no one in particular-he just liked to talk. He talked about being young, in love. He talked about getting old. Losing his hair, his eyesight, his wife. He talked about things he wished he had done, hadn’t done. He talked about dying.

Harvey’s talks could occasionally get out of hand. He would get so worked up and start crying so hard that he had to be sedated. “Just give me enough to end it Goddamn it!” He would scream and the orderlies injected him with meds.

Tired and wanting to die, Harvey would go to bed. But, every morning, there he was. His body hunched over the piano and his fingers working the keys like a showgirl working the stage.

He played with a majestic grace, so beautiful, that no one cared that he only played one song. So entranced by the spell his music put on them, no one complained.

Over and over he played. On and on. He only stopped when he wanted to talk about what was going through his old mind during his enthralling show of talent.

“I was thirteen,” one of the stories began, “and…and I just knew that I had the world in front of me. It was mine for the taking. And I did. I took it…I took her.” That was his favorite one, like the song, he told it time and time again and never tired of it.

It was the story of how he met his wife. How they ran away together at the age of sixteen. How he loved her so.

“It was terrible,” another one began. This one usually brought about his childish fits and threats of suicide. “It came so suddenly, that we…we hardly had time to say goodbye…”

It was colon cancer and it took her in a week. He wondered why he was spared and why it was taking him so long to pass on.

However, he always went back to playing. Back to creating the sounds that put so many people at ease, back to doing what made him feel wanted.

He would sway as he played. A white Ray Charles, always delivering his feel good hit.

“Fur Elise”

The infamous Beethoven melody was the only one in his repertoire, and it suited him just fine. He’d always play it happily.

Then, his 75th wedding anniversary came around.

His anniversaries were always hard. The guards on heightened suicide watch…this year was no different.

Just like any other day, he got up and he played. He played to the joy of his companions. He played through the pain of arthritis. He played beautifully. He stopped having his way with the piano every so often to express his discontent.

He told a story of her, one told a thousand times before. He told of her smell, the way her hair and eyes gleamed like the stars of the endless night sky. He told of fifteen years of pain.

“Living for 15 years without my wife, is like not living at all.” And he played again.

“I’m done. It’s time I met up with her.” He detailed his plan, reciting it like one of his stories. It played as often in his mind as the song did. How he would strangle himself with IV lines, extension chords, whatever he could find. And he played again.

Tearing up, and actually addressing the others for the first time in fifteen years, he said good-bye. He’d rather have them suffer than suffer more himself. And he played again.

He was stopped in the middle, grabbed from behind by nurses, there to foil his plan of death. They dragged him over the bench. His slippered and wrinkly feet banged on the carpet as they cleared his favorite and only seat.

The sound of his playing still rung in the ears of those listening as he was drug out of the room kicking and screaming. “I need to play!” he said, “I have to finish playing!” The nurses left the common room with Harvey and turned the corner, disappearing. But he could still be heard as he was taken to their chambers of safety, calling out in terrified pleas. “I have to play for Elise! FOR ELISE…!” The door closed, muffling his cries.

The two nurses that were left in the room talked as they headed together over to Harvey’s piano. “Who’s Elise?” One asked.

“That,” said the other as he carefully pulled the dust cover over the piano keys, “that was his wife.”