Alan J. Borsuk Treasure the gifts that are truly grand

What should become of the piano? My mother asked the question as her life was heading toward its end.

The question was about more than the piano. It also was about the values to be transmitted across generations. About memories and continuity and family connectedness. Will you carry on? Will all of you remember my generation?

My mother died a few days later, on Dec. 8, at the age of 95. She lived a fulfilling, vibrant life, with extraordinary good health until the last three months. My father died 10 months earlier, also at 95. They were married more than 72 years. We celebrate their lives as we mourn.

During the traditional Jewish “shiva” mourning period after my mother’s death, a friend, now in his 60s, came to visit. You need to treasure your memories, he told me. He said his mother died when he was four months old. It wasn’t until he was an adult that he learned some things about her life, including how she battled cancer as she was pregnant with him.

This is a weekend of holiday celebrations, with the somewhat rare event of the first day of Hanukkah falling on Christmas. For many, it is the peak of the year for family closeness and traditions.

I pass along my friend’s message: Treasure this, if you are among the fortunate who celebrate with your families, both immediate and extended. And make good use of your treasure.

I wrote in this space in October 2014 about my father’s piano. My father grew up in Madison and was a very advanced piano student as a child.

My grandparents ran a corner grocery store, living in an apartment upstairs. These were not people with a lot of money. In 1936, at the height of the Depression, my father, who was 15 at the time, came home from school one day and a Steinway baby grand was sitting in the living room. I don’t know how my grandparents put together the means to buy it. But, as I wrote in 2014, it was their way of investing in his future, of telling him, “We believe in you.”

Indeed, my father made his living playing, teaching, and tuning piano for decades in Madison. In December 2007, as they were about to turn 87, my parents gave up their house in Madison and moved to a senior apartment building in Milwaukee. The piano was the centerpiece of their new living room. Until his hands and mind faded, my father would sit at the piano, where he could look out on Milwaukee’s lakefront, and play with renewed enthusiasm.

Now both parents are gone and the remaining members of that generation in my extended family are few. Those of my generation are becoming the elders now.

So what to do with the piano? It’s not simple to place a baby grand piano, no matter what its sentimental value, and few in my family have the ability or inclination to play it. After raising the question, my mother assessed the pros and cons of different options for the Steinway.