A Harp Journey – Coming Home

In fall of 2011, an aggressive form of brain cancer attacked my mother. When I moved into the hospice home with her, I bagged my harp up and brought it 
along. I plunked out “Amazing 
Grace,” and together we 
just “noodled” around with
 it. Another musically-inclined
 patient down the hall was 
giddy over this instrument he’d always wanted to try. He liked to come stroke its strings and feel its vibrations.

When Mom died, I packed the harp up and never took it out of its bag again. I’m guessing it was, in part, a grief response. At any rate, that’s how I ended up here in this music shop. The dulcimer needs too much work and will eventually find its way to Goodwill. I leave the harp on consignment—along with a little piece of my heart. Maybe I even leave a little piece of my mother. I wonder if she’d be disappointed . . .

Read the rest over at Tweetspeak Poetry where this essay, which originally appeared in the spring issue of the Folk Harp Journal, has been reprinted as part of their Memoir Notebook series.