by Kerry Cue

Ghosts of Things Past!

The piano belonged to my mother, Kath Meehan. When my daughter asked this question almost 20 years ago, I laughed. The piano was indeed dusty. My mother had a ‘minimalist’ attitude to housework. I had the good fortune to have a childhood blessed by a mother who spent far more time playing the piano (She played in a local dance band for 25 years), than dusting it. If she wasn’t playing the piano, she was bush walking, bird watching, silk screen painting, or playing music for the disabled.

When my mother died not long after my daughter’s dusty piano observations, we five – very different – kids wanted some scrap of a eulogy put on her tombstone. We unanimously agreed on ‘A life of music and laughter’.

Of late, however, dust has been invading my house. No more or less than usual, I guess, but it accumulates because I don’t notice it. I need my reading glasses to see the dust. This makes me a little fearful that I am turning into Dicken’s Miss Havisham. Will I discover a decaying wedding cake when I put on my glasses? It almost seems possible.

Nevertheless, whenever I unexpectedly discover the furniture peppered with motes of dust, I laugh because I’m taken back to the world of my childhood.

A time of music and laughter.

Photo source: Carminesuperiore Bolg

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