Zainab Sayed

necticut where I had lived for many years but had originally used it when I had learned the trumpet. Now, the chords above the notes began to make more sense. In July I was into the four-note chords and playing songs fully. A piano mover came and transported mine to Asheville where it has been in my home since August 2018. I can’t describe the emotion I feel when I sit at this musical shrine, in some ways truly a memorial to my brother. And to my mother as well who played. It is now going on three years later since I have played nearly every day, singing Charles Trenet’s “La Mer” in French or crooning “Makin’ Whoopee.” I won’t list everything which spans classical, jazz, pop, country and rock, but I will talk about one song, “Daniel” by Elton John and these moving lyrics: “Daniel, my brother, you are older than me/Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won’t heal?/Your eyes have died but you see more than I . . .” The first times I played this song, I could not stop from choking back tears as if there were so many in my eyes that they had to gush from my mouth when I sang. Sometimes the tears couldn’t be choked. I have been teaching essay writing in college classes since 1992, but whenever I sit down to pen one, I’m not sure I know how. The word essay is from the French “essayer” which means to try. And I tried, after my brother’s death on March 6, 2018, to write about him. I recently reread those pages and found that my attempt had been epistolary and raw, a journal of devastated purging, not something for others to read. But I kept at it. Because a conclusion cannot be the same as a thesis; it must move above the initial idea and be something new. Like this piano, an original gift to Mom, later given to me, the conclusion must be a gift of sorts, a final offering that goes to a new place. If you think about it, a gift is a present and a talent. I just hope my brother and my mom know how much I think of them each time I sit down to the keys. I also begin to wonder where this piano will go after I am gone.

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