Five Years

My Cody won the Texas Piano Guild competion when he was 15, and placed sixth in the nationals.  Although he preferred the organ because its complexity was more challenging - he went on to obtain a bachelor's in organ, with minor in harpsichord - he could play the piano like nobody's business.  Just like this.

One of his old piano teachers played this nocturne at his funeral, and it sounded to me as if Cody himself were playing.  This (by some other artist than the one in the video) was one of a handful of recordings I played over and over again in the weeks and months after his death.

Music was his great passion, his raison d'etre. It brought me great comfort to think of him playing more and more glorious music somewhere, unimpeded by the limitations of this mortal coil.  He used to complain that it was very difficult to master a piece by Chopin or Liszt - they must have had such huge hands! he would say.  But he was a cowboy too, and master them he did.

Five years ago today, I awoke a widower.  That awful day.

It's hard to believe five years have gone by already.  We had only a little more than five years together.

A great loss; but better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all, as Tennyson said.  And I know that Cody loved me:  something no one can ever take away from me.

The cosmic irony is that we both had already loved and lost before, one way or another.  And when we found each other, at rather a late age, we neither of us dreamed that fate could be so cruel to us again, so soon. 

But it was that cruel. 

Or yet should I say, fate was that kind:  to allow us both a time of love and healing, of comfort and joy, before the dark waters parted us again.

I'm not writing to gain anyone's sympathy here; the time for all that is long past now. 

I'm just sharing a lovely memory, which sustains me to this day.  And the lesson that all in this life is temporary.  All of it.

So enjoy what you have, whether little or much - enjoy it today, fellas, and be grateful for it.  Because you never know what smiles or tears the morrow will bring.

Cody at our first meeting in New Orleans, November 1998.