How I Killed Two People with my Accordion

<<<...Previous  By the time we left Lincoln, Nebraska, Dad and I could both wheeze away on an accordion adequately, as well as take them apart, fix them and put them back together.  

Fast forward to after I left home to work in town.   I was living in a boarding house, with no piano, and had an older, used accordion I'd play sometimes for amusement and practice.  

Uncle Theo's mother, my great-grandmother Eliza Tupper (yes, distantly related to the Tupper of Tupperware), had  been a piano teacher, played the piano and reed organ at church, and even led the choir.  She loved music, particularly the old hymns.  At nearly ninety years of age she decided she'd had enough of being snowbound each winter and took off for Florida.   

One winter, weakened by a bout of influenza, she fell and fractured her hip.  Back then there wasn't a lot they could do, so she was bedridden in a nursing home for the duration, bored out of her mind.

When we went to visit at Thanksgiving, she announced that before her birthday on Christmas day, she was going to leave and spend Christmas with the angels.   Uncle Theo, a bit touchy about the subject of death, left abruptly.  My mother started in with platitudes and reassurances; Grandmother was strong as a horse, healthy except for not being able to walk, would probably live for years.   Grandma grabbed my arm and pulled me down to her.  She still had a grip like iron.

"They don't understand," she whispered in my ear.  "I am tired of laying in this bed and I want to go celebrate my birthday and Christmas in Heaven with the angels, and I will.  But you have to promise me first to bring your accordion and play it for me."

I promised, as much to get her to stop bruising my arm as anything else, and put it out of my mind.  I was sixteen, and at that age, one doesn't think as much about life's end.

A few days before Christmas I looked up from the sales counter at work and saw Uncle Theo speaking with my supervisor.  He came over to tell me I'd been given permission to leave, as Grandma Tupper has been raising Cain the entire day at the nursing home and disturbing the other patients, demanding to see me with my accordion.  Finally they called Uncle Theo and begged him to bring me.  We passed by the boarding house to pick up my accordion.  At the nursing home Uncle Theo waited in the car, refusing to  come in. 

Grandma had been moved to a private room because of the carrying on.  They had told her I was en route, and she was now laying quietly in the bed with her arms crossed on her chest.  All she lacked was a lily.  I tiptoed over, not knowing what to expect.   ...More >>>

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