Chopin

Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you and describe that influence.

Chopin’s dark, pensive Prelude Number 4 seems to stretch time and brings back memories of my grandmother’s drawn out illness and death. Mournful opening chords suggest a long infirmity, my grandmother Ilene, dependent on medicine to stay healthy enough to live at home. Like the descending chord structure, I watch as memories fade from my grandmother’s mind, faces and names disappear. The haunting rise and fall of the melody bring to mind good and bad days, days of normalcy and days of fear. An ornamental turn continues through the silence at the end of a phrase, the weak string of notes recalling the fearful time I thought I would never see my grandmother again. She lived in the hospital for ten days, fed intravenously for two, though to me it felt like months. As severe internal bleeding ravaged her body she looked as pale as chalk, except for the dark bruises covering her skin like rust on a steel beam.

Like Chopin’s prelude, Grandmother’s struggle continues. The eerie refrain mirrors her memory, coming and going, rising and falling in the same manner as before, changing from day to day. A dramatic rise in dynamics accompanied with grand minor chords takes me back to the day I saw my grandmother having seizures, then watched as the ambulance returned her to the hospital. The melody briefly returns, then begins to fade. My grandmother begins another hospital stay, and begins to weaken. Silence. A chord rings out; the key is wrong, resolution is delayed. Ilene lives for another day. Silence. Another chord, this one still at odds with the rest of the piece, not quite right. I hear news that my grandmother is still in the hospital. Again, silence. A deep breath, and a final chord falls. My grandmother breathes, and peace arrives. Like the prelude’s, the final chord of her life is tragic, inevitable, and far too soon. The entire piece, her whole life, points to this particular end from the very beginning, and the space in between is an expansion of life, spreading beauty and joy. Her struggle heightened the significance of her end, augmented the power of the good she did in the world.
Chopin’s music helped me to come to terms with my grandmother’s death in February of 2012. Her death and Chopin’s prelude both affected me deeply, and influence me today, each giving meaning to me and to one another. They are related tales of mortality and the pain of life, and of triumph. Being with my grandmother during her struggle for life helped me learn patience with gentle reminders of routine tasks, and the knowledge that I will one day lay dying as she did. Seeing the parallels between Chopin and my grandmother’s death taught me to consider the unity of human experience and led me to hope that when I join the beautiful tragedy of death I will be surrounded by loved ones and remembered by them after my passing, as she continues to be.