I am pleased to share long-time Writing It Real member Mary Ann Payne?s writing in response to the writing exercise I shared last week.

Grave Matters
by Mary Ann Payne

It?s time to bury the piano. Chop it up in tiny pieces and put it in a deep hole in the backyard next to the cement block wall that reminds me of a prison yard fence. The soil is ready since I paid someone yesterday to remove the aloe and fan palms that were competing for space. No one will notice if the bare spot simply expands until I decide what to plant there.

But why the piano? Why not have it tuned so I can play it on empty weekends?? Why not sell it on eBay or give it to a worthy charity? Why not haul it to the curb and attach a Day-Glo ?FOR SALE? sign? Why am I so intent on destroying and burying a helpless, hapless piano?

Why questions have no answers so I won?t give any. I?ll just collect the splintered pieces and lay the stories to rest as I sink each capstan screw and damper spring deep within the clotted clay soil:

• My first piano was a battered upright that anchored the east side of the living room in my parents? South Dakota home.? I was convinced its sweet tone came from the angel choir Mom arranged on cardboard risers across its bare top each December but maybe it simply adopted the gentle, subdued melodies Mrs. S. assigned me each week. Mr. S. worked for Dad and raised prize-winning delphiniums that grew as tall as the piano. He also had frequent psychotic breaks so my weekly lessons were a way my folks said we could help their family keep bread on the table. I longed to play crashing, rollicking, dancing pieces like my friends, but realized quiet, calming tones were more appropriate to the situation.
• When we moved from our cozy yellow cottage to a new ranch house, a small Spinet with a tinny voice that refused to carry a true pitch stood in a corner of the living room. I didn?t really mind because I had stopped taking lessons when Mr. S.?s affliction disappeared after the fifth round of electro-shock treatment. In any event, my musical life had moved from home to school where I played clarinet in band, orchestra and a variety of ensembles and practiced the piano as I accompanied soloists in state competitions. Free afternoons were spent draped across a friend?s chenille bedspread dreaming to Pavanne pour un Enfant Prince and sneering at other high school kids gyrating to Elvis. Mom had the piano tuned each November so I could play carols for the annual holiday openhouse, but the only other attention it received was its weekly dusting with a remnant of my dad?s old underwear. Pianos had no place in the life of a teenager in the ?50s.
• Twenty years later, our daughter, Sarah, wanted a piano. She begged and pleaded with the persistence and skill that had produced a gray, tiger-striped kitten with salmon ears some years before. Recognizing the inevitable, I focused on the negotiations. Like the kitten, the piano would be her responsibility. I would pay for lessons, she would practice daily, and we would split the cost of the instrument. As happened when the kitten became a cat, the care and feeding of the piano soon lost its allure. To give Sarah credit, she had paid over half of her half before she started bartering household tasks and errands in lieu of cash. Practicing and lessons were soon replaced by the Bay Street Boys and fantasy fiction. I had the piano tuned each year at the same time the fireplace chimney was cleaned, but never touched either one of them.
• Sarah left for college and the piano moved with us to our present home. I considered brush-up lessons so I could compose and play wild, soaring music, but that never happened. I discovered writing was more portable and the sounds my pen created on paper captured the melodies I carried in my head much more accurately than the atonal clamor my fingers produced on the keyboard. Of course tuning the piano might help, but it?s too late now. I want the space for bookshelves.

Disposing of a piano is not as easy as I thought it would be. Shipping costs are higher than anyone on eBay is willing to pay for a mass-produced, no-name, family pet of an instrument. When I offer it to the Boys and Girls Club, they reluctantly agree to accept my donation IF I obtain a current appraisal and pay for moving and tuning expenses. None of the kids in the neighborhood with iPods in their ears are remotely interested in something that doesn?t plug into an amplifier. So ?? It?s time to put the piano and me out of our misery in a more direct manner. I?ll simply chop it up and bury it.

Dismantling the small upright piano is surprisingly easy. The top and sides pop off with only a nudge from the crow bar and find a home in a neighbor?s garage where he?ll turn them into satin-lined jewelry chests to sell at swap meets. The ivory and ebony keys will be drilled and strung with hand-carved beads for jewelry to give to friends. There are more pieces inside the piano than I thought there would be. The strings lift effortlessly off the soundboard but the frame is too large for my digging stamina. I carefully disentangle each string from its pins and then watch with delight as it springs in joy from the released tension. Soon the back yard looks like a busy barber shop where no one has taken time to sweep up the curls. With a few whacks from my ax, the frame and soundboard are chopped and stacked as kindling. Quick! Shove all the quivering strings and stray felt pieces into the hole and smother them with hammer shanks and damper flanges and black rail cloth. Add the still-shining pedals and mix everything with the broken glass, rusty nails and concrete shards buried by the developers who built our tract house in a gravel pit.

I conduct a fitting burial: say a few words to myself about the transient nature of life and possessions, cry a few tears to honor unfulfilled dreams, tamp the earth in place, and plant morning glory and squash seeds that will soon cover the concrete in glorious green and blue melodies. Back inside the house, I play an exuberant Kitaro CD and measure the wall for shelves to hold scores of books that will sing to me forever.

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Of her piece Mary Ann wrote:

The piano was tucked into a corner of the living room behind a sofa and held my collection of kaleidoscopes beneath a quilted wall hanging. It was inconspicuous and not really bothering anyone so I hadn?t considering using the space for anything else until my writing suggested a bookcase wall. ?Finding a new home for the instrument was as difficult as I describe in ?Grave Matters?. We mentioned our free-for-the-taking piano to everyone we met and finally, Bob?s chiropractor decided to give his current piano to a son and use our smaller variety in his own living room. Three burly Samoans from a congregation that shared his church appeared?with a suitable truck one?Saturday?afternoon and effortlessly carried the instrument to its new home. We paid for its first tuning in gratitude and understand it is living a happy life where it is played almost daily.

It was such fun to write and did indeed help me solve a problem I didn?t actually realize I had.? Now I?m trying to down-size some of the other ?treasures? we?ve collected in 30 years in this house and almost 59 years of marriage. It seems difficult because we don?t need the room ? we have four bedrooms for just Bob and I and his computers ? but we also don?t need the stuff. Part of our aging-in-place decision is to give things to our kids and grandkids while we can still enjoy their enjoyment of them. It?s fun to see our college graduate grandson choose pictures we hung in OUR first apartment for HIS first apartment and rewarding to see a daughter ask for a blue glass necklace my mother wore because she WANTS it and not because she found it among a pile of other jewelry after I?m gone. As you suggest, I am indeed finding new joys and figuring out new ways to live this chapter that took a turn I didn?t expect.

PS: When I read ?Grave Matters? at a Kiwanis meeting, I was amazed to discover several people thought I had literally disposed of our piano in this fashion. ?I knew our backyard needed considerable attention, but I didn?t imagine someone could think I could bury a piano unnoticed there. I guess some people believe anything is possible in Southern California.

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When we write in a response to a prompt like the one I shared last week, we come at things sideways and glean new truths. The surprises, insight, and experience our writing conjures can change our lives. Thank you, Mary Ann, for doing the exercise and for trusting the message your well-envisioned writing held for you! And, of course, thank you for sharing your results with in-person and now on-line audiences.