Forever

It occurred to me,

I don’t know why,

that we don’t have any recordings

of my mother-in-law playing

the violin. She played

in an orchestra in Chicago

back in the early 1940s,

back before she married Joe

and moved east to New Jersey .

She never played again after that,

something she always regretted.

We all regret things

in our lives so it is OK I suppose,

that Dorothy gave up playing

the violin in order to raise

my beautiful wife.

But it sure would be exciting

to have a recording of her playing,

exciting to have the illusion

of her being around us again,

vibrant, alive, the music

of Brahms and Beethoven and Mozart

engulfing us in its universal rhythms,

alive as she ought to be - forever.

Michael Estabrook