the sweetest send-off
November 21st, 2007 by smidge
[This post is an update to demolishing a dying woman’s piano. If you haven’t already read that, I suggest you follow the link and do so first.]
When I parked the truck at the end of the day we demolished the dying woman’s piano, I just couldn’t get the cute little lady out of my head. How sad she was to see her piano go to waste. So I took another look in the back of the truck to see if maybe there were some salvageable pieces. There were. So I carried them home, got out some screws and wood glue, and fashioned this little table:
A hectic schedule made me wait almost exactly two weeks, so when I finally drove back to the lady’s apartment, with the table I made from her piano in the back of my pickup, I wasn’t sure if she’d still be there. The first thing I noticed was that her balcony was still full of potted plants. A good sign. But her name was no longer on the mail slot. I buzzed up, hoping she was still alive.
After a long minute I saw a figure peeping out at me from the balcony. It was her. I called up, awkwardly, “Remember, I hauled away your piano a couple weeks ago…Well I found a way to recycle some of it….” She said of course she remembered, that she’d be down in a minute.
As soon as she saw the table, before I could lift it down, she scrambled up into the bed of my truck to inspect the workmanship and generally fondle it. I remember thinking how limber she seemed, for someone who’s supposed to be so near death.
It turned out, I soon discovered, that she actually had up to a few months to live, and that she had only recently been told this by the doctors when we removed the piano. And by then, when I returned with the table, she had told her family. “Wait till I tell my family about this,” she said. She kept looking at me and saying “Oh…” the way a grandparent does right before they grab a baby’s cheek. Until finally she broke down and started crying. We had one more overlong hug. I didn’t know what to say, but she pretty much summed it up:
“This is the sweetest send-off,” she said.
I wasn’t really trying to do something “sweet” per se. I didn’t know what I was doing there, but I felt compelled to do it. Maybe I felt guilty about wasting the thing. Or demolishing it right on the other side of her apartment door. I know it’s sick, but maybe part of me wanted proof, two weeks later, that she was actually dying. I don’t know.
When she was done thanking me, I said goodbye pretty quickly and pulled away in my truck. It was awkward for both of us. I felt like I already overstepped some boundary, and I didn’t want to linger.
