My grandmother's piano stood in the same corner of the living room for as long as I could remember, but nobody ever touched it. Its lid stayed closed, a thin layer of dust settling over the wood every year. My mother always said it was broken, and none of us thought to question her.
When my grandmother passed away last spring, my mother and I spent a weekend clearing out the old house. I found myself standing in front of the piano, curious for the first time in my life. I lifted the lid, half expecting broken strings or missing keys. Instead, the keys looked untouched, almost new. I pressed one down, gently, bracing for silence or an ugly, out-of-tune sound.
A soft, clear note filled the room. I pressed another, and another. Nothing was broken at all. Confused, I called my mother over, and she stood frozen in the doorway, staring at the piano as though she were seeing a ghost.
She finally explained. My grandmother had stopped playing the day my grandfather died, more than twenty years earlier. It had been his favorite sound in the house, and after he was gone, she could not bring herself to fill the silence he had left behind. Rather than sell the piano or give it away, she simply closed the lid and let everyone believe it no longer worked. It was easier, my mother said, than explaining why she never wanted to hear it again.
I sat down and played the only song I remembered from childhood lessons, slowly, with my mother standing beside me. The piano had never been broken. It had only been waiting, all those years, for someone brave enough to open the lid — and for a house ready to hear music again.