I thought it might be annoying, a woman coming into the room to sing. But she had asked permission and the family had said yes, a couple of songs would be nice. At a time like this.
She came in with her guitar and I watched her carefully navigate around the tubes which were long enough to make loops on the floor. If it were me, I’d have certainly bumped such an unwieldy instrument into a bedrail or wall, making everyone cringe. But this lady was more adept than I - that, and she had more experience plotting courses around the equipment of the dying - and she landed smoothly in a chair beside the bed.
She played songs that were pleasing in their own right, yet her voice made them reach my ears as church bells ringing in the news of salvation. The songs, four of them, filled the room along with my tears and the loud breaths of my friend in the bed which kept some kind of time with the sweet notes. Like a metronome.
Today, music was both therapy and pain. She is going and the music was there to keep her afloat the time she has left. And, as in a drama of epic proportions, a single tear befell her cheek.
The woman packed her guitar back into its soft case, pulled the zipper around it. The music had been absorbed into the walls, the floor, the people; still, after she left the room I felt the space where the notes had been, loom large before us.
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