The Death of a Stranger

I find myself dedicating my music this week to a stranger who died yesterday. The two pieces by Gabriel Faure seem an appropriate elegy to this neighbor who was released from life after succumbing to a stroke.

On Monday as I sat down on the porch to eat my breakfast cereal, an ambulance and paramedics showed up directly across the street. They brought out a woman on a stretcher and took her away with a few friends and relatives standing around but not showing a great deal of surprise.

It’s a small place with a lot of houses in close proximity. Everyone’s ear was out to find out what had happened. The word on the street later was that the woman had suffered an asthma attack. I breathed a sigh of relief as I hoped she was doing as well.

But the very next morning just as I sat down to eat my breakfast, the ambulance was back. This time the woman appeared to be totally motionless as she was loaded into the ambulance. The EMT turned on the external oxygen tank and they sped away.

Later in the day we heard that she had been removed from life support and had died, having suffered a stroke. The house looks the same as it always does. Nothing has changed here at Chautauqua, except that one of the guests is no longer able to enjoy this place.

Who exactly was this woman who died? And what was the real cause of her death? Why did she come home on Monday if she was so sick? Was she perhaps terminally ill? These questions about this stranger whom I never met keep going through my head.

It occurred to me as I practiced this morning that the two pieces I am playing are ethereal and beautiful and seem a fitting way to recognize the stranger’s death. I will play them with her in mind, this stranger whose name I don’t even know, this stranger who is no longer living just across the street.