Grace

29- the last time I played.

The last time I played was right after I moved out of my dad's house for the first time. I wanted to take the piano with me when I moved out. I came back to get it after I had left. Instead of getting it, I sat down to play for the last time.

My dad had been disappointed I didn't take it with me and I wasn't playing anymore. He knew it was my mother's favorite and it would have really made her proud for me to continue playing. 

I had took lessons all my life, ever since I was three. My mother got me a small piano for Christmas when I was three. Instantly, she saw I had a talent for it, after that, that's when my lessons started. 

It really was my mother's favorite to hear me play. Sometimes I thought she could hear me all the way from Heaven. I felt like she was sitting on the stool next to me every time I played. I had missed her so much. I cried almost every time I played.

I stopped playing as much when things started getting bad between Hunter and I. I started lacking the motivation to play. I was too depressed to play. Instead of playing, I would lay in bed crying.

My mother's favorite song I played was Dark Paradise by Lana Del Rey. She loved Lana. I think that was why I loved Lana so much. My dad's favorite song to hear was some Skid Row song I couldn't remember the name of, that would've sounded much better on guitar.

My dad was jealous I learned piano and not guitar. The Christmas after I turned 4, he bought me a guitar, hoping I'd have as much of a talent for it as I did my mother's Christmas gift the year before. I didn't. He played guitar and always wanted me to learn. I did learn, but didn't have much of a talent for it. But my true talent was the piano. 

My mother loved the piano. She was a piano teacher at a middle school. I learned how to play mostly from her, even though I had more than just her for a piano teacher. She didn't know how to teach a three year old the basics of piano, which is why she put me in lessons. Well that was half the reason. The other reason was because she was so impressed by how well I could play at three years old.

My mother was very religious, but was also into witchcraft. I don't think God was happy with her doing witchcraft. But she always believed he was telling her what she needed to hear. That he was guiding her during her tarot practice or her intuition with horoscopes and rising signs and all that. She knew God would forgive her of her sins and still allow her into Heaven, or at least that's what she believed. We all believed that too. 

My dad became much more religious after she passed away. He missed her more than I did. Once she passed away, I took on singing. I began to sing when I played piano. Something she didn't even do.

The last time I played, I played Dark Paradise, her favorite song. She loved any Lana song I played on piano, just because it was Lana and because it was me playing. She was so happy and so proud of how big in my life piano was. I never played in school or in any competitions or anything, which is what she was hoping for for me. She was still proud though that I would play every day at home. 

As I sang and played Dark Paradise, a few tears fell from my eyes. Thinking about her. I was also thinking about how I moved to far from home. I was sad about it. I wanted to live with Hunter, I just wanted to live closer to home. Closer to her, even though she was gone. This house felt like her. I still always felt her presence in this house. In the piano too.

Some part of me believed that her soul went into my piano. But when I stopped playing, I stopped believing that. This was her piano. She played it more than I did. That was the last time I played.