Healing With Music: Distracting Myself Through Grief

She lifted the red bag out of the case and slipped the contents out. She placed the instrument down and opened a small compartment, finding the little box filled with rosin. After twisting the end of the bow, she applied some of the rosin, picked up her violin, and met Mrs. Zierk, who was setting up the music stand.

Several different people had asked the eight-year old girl why she had chosen to play the violin. It was true that her grandmother had played it, but honestly, she had chosen the violin because she had told her daddy that it was the instrument she wanted to play. Now, almost two years since he had died of a heart attack, she had chosen to play the violin because she had told HIM that she would. She felt the need to keep that promise. She had been watching the older kids at school play in the orchestra. The way their bows moved back and forth and up and down mesmerized her. The little girl wanted to do it, too.

She took lessons for ten years before starting college and having an audition with the community symphony. Her teacher, Mrs. Zierk, was the second chair violinist in the symphony. For awhile now, she brought music from the symphony for the young girl to play at lessons.

Auditioning was a formality, as the symphony was required to accept college players, but the girl wanted to do her best and Mrs. Zierk was there helping her to prepare. The teenager walked into the symphony’s practice room, took our her instrument, tuned it, and stood where the conductor pointed on the stage. Her hands drenched with sweat, she took a deep breath and hoped that no one, especially Mrs. Zierk, would come in as she played all by herself on that stage.

As she played, the conductor walked around, getting his stand set up for the rehearsal and several adults began to arrive. They barely noticed the girl as they got out their own instruments and warmed up. Then, all of a sudden, she noticed her teacher walk through the doorway and get her own violin out, her back turned towards the stage to pretend that she was ignoring the audition. Suddenly filled with nerves, the girl hit a wrong note, corrected it and kept playing as she saw her teacher suddenly flinch from the sound of the error. After she finished auditioning, the conductor turned around, looked her in the eye and waved his hand toward the back of the 2nd violin section as he said, “Go ahead, but you won’t last six weeks.”

Six years later, she sat in her chair, getting ready to play another concert. During a section of music where she didn’t need to play, she looked out into the audience as she had done for every previous performance. She saw her mother, her husband, her mother-in-law, and her father-in-law. Each of them had attended every symphony performance. In the first years, her mother sat alone, but during those six years she had met someone special and they were married. Now he, along with his parents, sat with her mother for every concert.

Her husband, who didn’t play any instruments and couldn’t keep a steady beat on his own, would beam with pride. She always caught his eye while sitting on stage and his smile would broaden, creeping into his eyes as he nodded his head in acknowledgement. For this performance, she sat in her chair, knowing that it would be the last time. The baby in her belly laid still as she played. Whenever the woman practiced or played, the baby would settle and seem to be soothed by the music floating into the womb.

When the child was born, the woman decided that it was time to put her instrument away. Playing the violin had been a good escape for her for many years. It had given her a way to fill the holes in her life, to fill the voids created from her traumas. Now she had a young family of her own and she wanted to devote her time to that instead of to her music.

Three more children followed, and as the children grew, the woman was often asked to pick up her violin and play again. Her husband and her mother insisted that she should start playing again. They kept telling her how much they had enjoyed watching her play, and how good she had been. They tried to convince her, but she was afraid. She was afraid that she didn’t have an instrument that could be played anymore, and she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to play as well as she once had.

One day at work, a friend who knew that she had played the violin and that her husband wanted her to begin playing again handed her a violin case. “Open it,” the friend said, telling the woman it was now hers to play forever. The woman cried with joy, went home and started to practice. A few months later, another friend, who conducted the high school musicals, asked her if she would be willing to play a violin part for the upcoming play, “Cinderella”. She thought about it for awhile and decided that she needed the challenge.

On the first performance, she opened her case, carefully lifted the violin and bow out of their spots, tuned up the strings and sat down in her chair in the orchestra pit between the first violin and the viola player. It had been twenty-five years since she had last done this. She looked out into the audience searching for the beaming smile of her husband. But he was not there. Neither was her mother, her mother-in-law or her father-in-law. She began to play, tears repeatedly welling in her eyes. She had lost her old audience, each of them slipping away from cancer, dementia, or old age.

Just as she felt she would burst into tears, the music filled that hole in her soul and provided her with an escape. She let herself become lost in the music. The music was a chance to let go of the pain, even if only for only a short while. She looked at the faces of her daughters in the audience and felt joy knowing that they were seeing her play for the first time. But she missed her old audience. She missed him. He had died only a few months before she decided to do this, and the pain of that loss was greater than any she had ever experienced. There was little she could do to get through the days without crying.

After that performance, she was invited to join a string group. She was allowed to escape through the music of her violin each week. She decided that it was time. It was time to do what her husband… and her mother.. had wanted her to do. Only, she didn’t have a truly playable violin.

She called the luthier on the phone and told him what she wanted. He asked her many questions about her history and about how she wanted to play in the future. She answered all of his questions. He built a violin specifically for her. At first, when it arrived, she was too afraid to play it. Too afraid to touch it because it was so valuable and so beautiful. Finally, she began to really play it and it immediately sang when she pulled the bow across the strings, making a sound that gave her hope. It gave her hope that maybe she could do this again. She continued to practice, to work towards regaining the skills she had once had as a young violinist.

One day, her friend, that conductor, again asked her to play for a high school musical. But this time, she would be the ONLY violin, and the part she was being asked to play was very technical and challenging. After thinking about it for awhile, she decided that she would try to play the part, but made the conductor promise that he would add another violin if she couldn’t handle it. “You won’t need me to,” he said, having more confidence in the woman than she had in herself.

So she practiced. And practiced. And practiced some more. She worried about failing, and then she practiced those parts even more until her fingers knew where the notes were and she could get lost in the music again. And after over a hundred hours of practice, the first performance night arrived.

Carefully, she lifted the beige bag out of the case and slipped the contents out. She placed the instrument down and opened a small compartment, and found the little box filled with rosin. After twisting the end of the bow, she applied some of the rosin, picked up her violin, and met the other musicians who were getting set up in the orchestra pit.

And she played.

And she cried.

And she escaped.

Again.

If you, or someone you care about is dealing with grief, here are some tips for coping with grief from people who are dealing with it themselves!