My wife’s grandmother, on her father’s side, died from cancer, more than a decade ago. Her name was Delcie, and I remember her as a positive, charming, warm lady who was always a joy to be around. She was short, and her two daughters –my wife’s two aunts on her father’s side– are both short as well, and also both very pleasant and charming. I still see, whenever I see either of the two of them, Sue and Patti, a lot of Delcie, living on in them.

At the point in time when the cancer was first discovered, it had metastasized and spread all over her body. No surgeon, or team of surgeons, could have removed every piece of the cancer, with a dozen scalpels working constantly for hours. As I remember it, she didn’t put up any fight at all, from a medical standpoint; since things were so far gone, there wasn’t much that could have been done. The exploratory surgery that led to the discovery was the last medical procedure of her life, if memory serves.

Today, she’s most certainly in a better place.

Delcie’s husband, Vern –my wife’s paternal grandfather and my father-in-law’s father– was lost without his wife. I don’t remember how long it was, exactly, that Vern lived after Delcie’s death, but I don’t remember it being very long. To this day, many of the members of the family consider Vern to have died from a broken heart.

Delcie took care of Vern; that became obvious to everyone after her death –if it hadn’t been before– when she wasn’t around and Vern started to require a lot of care and looking after. To the extent that Delcie was so lovable and enjoyable, Vern was a little bit less so, especially in the eyes of his children, to my recollection. So, the tediousness of having to look after Vern was taxing on everyone involved.

Delcie gave piano lessons, back in the day, to help to add to the family income, I suppose. And, as fate would have it, Vern and Delcie lived a stone’s throw from the house that I grew up in, in the rural countryside southeast of the town of Buchanan, MI. In fact, my mother took piano lessons from Delcie when I was just a boy; I suppose my mother was looking for something to do. Whether or not this is related at all, my mother ended up forcing me to take piano lessons a few years after she stopped taking them. I took my piano lessons from the wife of the youth pastor at our church –she’s was nice, he was a jerk.

The piano that Delcie gave piano lessons on was not the same piano that she loved to play. Delcie played by choice on a baby grand piano, as the stories go; she gave lessons on an upright of a somewhat lesser quality. That upright piano is the piano that my son and one of my daughters practiced their piano lessons on, as it now sits in the “music room” of her granddaughter’s –my wife’s– home.

Which is to say, most likely, that my mother took her lessons with Delcie, when I was a kid, on the piano that her grandchildren –my mother’s grandchildren; my children– would eventually practice their lessons on.

When I was a kid, I practiced my piano lessons on a player piano, which is a piano that is made in such a way that it can play by itself. Modern day player pianos, from what I understand, are mostly electronic, but old player pianos were entirely mechanical. My practices, which I remember being most laborious, involved drills at which my piano teacher expected me to become proficient, and practicing music that I would eventually play for a church service at some point in the future. Needless to say, the inspiration for me to become the world’s greatest concert pianist was never really there.

In recent years, the only person to play the piano at my parents’ house is my father, who, to my knowledge, never took a day of lessons in his life.

My father uses the player piano as a player piano, for entertainment purposes, which is ironic to think about since both my mother and I took lessons to become piano players –who are, technically, entertainers– and neither of us, as far as I know, have ever played that piano, or any other piano, to attempt to entertain anyone. But, when his grandchildren are over, sometimes, and occasionally at parties around the holidays, my dad would play the player piano.

The way that the player piano works is this: it has pedals which you pump up and down. Doing so drives the internal mechanism that turns the rollers on which you place a piano roll. The piano roll rolls as you pedal, and the roll has the music on it that plays the keys on the piano. Different rolls contain different songs.

My memories of my father from my childhood are significantly different, with respect to the man, than the memories that I am building of him as an adult. The father that I remember from my childhood would not have been interested in entertaining anyone through any endeavor.

I take that back.

I have memories of my father from my childhood, now that I’m looking, that are buried away under other memories of who he was around me, as my father. My memories of who he was around me are memories of a stern, serious instructor. My memories of him interacting with others –presumably those he wasn’t responsible for parenting– are memories of a man who loves to entertain. I remember parties that my parents had with their friends over, when I was probably on the very edge of being able to remember things, and my dad was always right in the middle of wherever the fun was happening.

These days, with his grandchildren and great nieces and great nephews all gathered around, my dad can pump the pedals on that player piano and go through roll after roll, song after song, and the keys jump magically up and down on that keyboard and everyone is having a blast.

And you know it’s a small world when Vern and Delcie’s great grandchildren can listen to their former student’s husband pumping the pedals on a player piano just up the street a ways from where their old farmhouse used to be, while their grand-daughter and her husband sit alongside and think of all of the beauty in the world that comes from a piano.