Angela's Harp

My friend, Angela, recently built a harp. I remember when she first told me that she had plans to do it. She mentioned that she had been perusing the various patterns and kits for a while, trying to reconcile the complexity of the project with her resolve to finish it once she started. Building a harp from the ground up!  How does a person accomplish that?!  Well, Angela, for one, would have had both the nerve and the drive to attempt it, so as proud friends do, I made it my goal to throw my enthusiastic support her way. 

When I saw her weekly at our band rehearsal, I would ask her about her progress. One week she let me know she had made a decision and had ordered her kit. A couple of weeks later she announced that her living room floor was sectioned off with all of the innumerable pieces, and that she had begun sanding the wooden parts.  There was one week where she wasn’t sure if she had bitten off more than she could chew with this project. “But,” she said to me, “it’s a labor of love and it won’t matter if I’m 80 years old when I finally finish it.”

A labor of love. This is the crux of Angela’s story, the part about why she wanted to build a harp in the first place.  I met Angela about four years ago, when she sat down next to me in band and introduced herself to me. We got to chatting during warm up—we both played trumpet—and in life there are just people with whom you feel an instant affinity. We became fast friends. By the end of our rehearsal that evening, we knew some things about each other. She knew a bit about my family situation, and I knew that she had recently lost a son, a child of eight, to cancer.

Derek was one of those boys who lit up a room with an exuberant smile that took up the entire bottom of his face. Under a blonde pate complete with a cow-lick, a pair of aqua-marine eyes squinched up on the outside corners while his eyebrows rose forlornly on either side of the bridge of his nose. He was an irresistible combination of good looks and comedy. He had a chin dimple to boot. Kate, his younger sister, adored him, and he was a protective, guiding, older sibling. Even through his cancer treatments, Derek was the type of boy who concentrated on the living he was doing, over and above the illness he was experiencing. In one of my favorite photos of him, Derek is posing in a mediaeval knight’s costume holding a sword and shield, gazing off in the distance and trying very hard to look serious and grown up. The photo has been stylized to a sepia tint which gives him the effect of a young, virtuous conqueror, defending his homeland. Priceless.

He loved classical music. In his illness, Derek was able to have sessions with a music therapist who introduced him to the Hapi drum. The therapist would have Kate play the drum for her brother while accompanying her on the guitar. A Hapi drum works similarly to a harp, by the way. The effect of this harp-like drum was soothing to Derek during his hospice.

To lose such a boy at such a young age—the heartbreak of it is raw and ugly. How many of us would shake our fist at the heavens over such a tragedy? But Angela, the mother of Derek, decided to continue living and loving afterward, in a way that keeps his spirit alive—this has been the mission of Angela’s life. She isn’t the type to waste time in trivialities that don’t unite the people around her in happy endeavors. She believes deeply in music, joy, laughter, hugs, huge slices of lemon pie...and harps. 

She knew when she made her decision to build her harp, that there was no going back, no option to quit, no matter how intricate or frustrating the task would become. She said to me at one point, “After what I have lost, nothing is too challenging for me now, because nothing could be more difficult than not having Derek here.”  When you have survived profound loss, there are no comparable difficulties going forward.

Over the years there has been a little group which gathers after our band rehearsal at a local restaurant. It turns out that every one of us in this group has known profound loss of some sort. We ditched the restaurant a couple of weeks ago and kicked off the holiday season with a Thanksgiving potluck at our house, a rousing session of playing Christmas carols on our instruments, and plenty of jokes and laughter. Angela brought her finished harp. Her daughter, Kate, played a composition on it that she had created. Angela also played for us, beautifully (even though she says she is just beginning to learn it).

Afterward, she generously invited me to pluck the strings for myself. I sat down on the chair and carefully leaned the harp backward toward my left shoulder. There is an air gap on the back side of the harp and, naturally, I could not resist peering down into it. Inside that empty space, in lovely handwriting on the backside of the wood, are the signatures of Angela and her family members, along with a dedication poem to Derek. They built this tribute into the harp. This is really Derek’s harp. Angela intends to learn all she can to play it well, so that she can travel with it, bringing comforting music to other suffering children and their families.