“Paula, can you find something for me on your computer? There’s something I want to give Dad.”

My heart leapt. It was 2016, and Mom was deep into Parkinson’s. She hadn’t been able to go out shopping for years.

By then, most of our daily phone conversations were fairly one-sided. I provided family updates, which she enjoyed and could later share with Dad.

One update Mom would be sure to give me, though, was:

“Dad played the piano this afternoon. Oh, it was beautiful.”

For at least a decade, I’d offered to order clothes, gifts, books – anything – off the internet for Mom to enjoy. Well into her 80s at this point, Mom didn’t take me up on the offer.

Until that one day.

She’d been thinking about a gift for Dad and wondered if I’d be able to find some sheet music for him. It was a special piece of piano music that she knew Dad would love.

I was happy to report back that I found a “gently used” copy of the piece online. The sheet music should arrive at their home within days.

The vendor? Harold’s Books.

Mom was delighted. It was fun for us to share this secret.

A few days later, though, I heard from Harold himself via email. He’d messed up and sent the expedited package to someone in Ohio instead of Mom in Connecticut. As I read the email, I could feel my blood pressure bubbling.

The email continued, saying he was very sorry and had contacted the person who would receive the sheet music in error, asking them to forward it to Mom immediately. I emailed Harold back, thanked him for letting me know, and explained how important this package was to a certain mother and daughter – and another gentleman named Harold.

Now, all we could do was wait.

The unnamed person in Ohio behaved honorably and sent the package on without delay. Mom happily presented her special gift to Dad on his 86^th birthday.

That was the last I’d heard of the sheet music until the spring of 2021, after Mom and Dad had both passed and we four offspring had the daunting task of clearing out and selling their home. Middle brother Dave had offered to inventory the house and send out a list, so that we could each choose some mementoes.

I’d asked him to keep a lookout for the sheet music, as I would have liked to at least have a photo of it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t recall the title …

… and Dad had a ton of sheet music.

Luckily, as I told Dave the story, he realized he … well, let’s turn the rest of the storytelling over to him:

In the mid-20^th century United States, as part of an overall nationalistic trend in the arts, there was a vogue for orchestra music that portrayed the country’s significant historical moments or archetypal landscapes in dramatic, colorful ways. Dad had a soft spot for this genre; among the LPs in heavy rotation on the Vayo stereo in the ’60s and ’70s was Victory at Sea, the soundtrack from an early-1950s television series about the US Navy’s campaigns in World War II. The composer with marquee billing for VaS was Broadway luminary Richard Rodgers, of Rodgers and Hart / Rodgers and Hammerstein fame. But just as important to the final production was his collaborator Robert Russell Bennett, who spun out Rodger’s themes and orchestrated the music.

A similar spirit of collaboration was critical to the career of Ferde Grofé, the composer of another of Dad’s favorite pieces of orchestral Americana. The self-taught Grofé was hired by Paul Whiteman, leader of a popular small jazz orchestra of the 1920s and ’30s, to play violin and serve as staff orchestrator. So when George Gershwin, whose Rhapsody in Blue had been premiered by the Whiteman group, was looking for someone to arrange the piece for full symphony orchestra, Grofé was in the right place at the right time.

Later, he expressed his gratitude to Whiteman through the dedication of the piece that was to become his calling card, and Dad’s favorite, the Grand Canyon Suite.

Inspired by a camping trip Grofé took to the canyon in his 20s, the suite portrays sunrise, sunset, the landscape, and – perhaps as a nod to Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony (another Dad fave)- a thunderstorm. The movement most beloved by Dad and the general public is “On the Trail,” with its evocation of a donkey clip-clopping through the magnificent landscape.

As it happened, a piano arrangement of the suite by “D. Savino” was the last music I ever played for Mom and Dad, in October of 2019, only a month before Mom passed away. I made a point on my visits of playing for them on the piano they had bought in support of my high-school music studies. Sometimes I brought music with me, sometimes I played things from Dad’s music library. Sometimes I had pieces prepared, sometimes I winged it and sight-read. That’s what I did with the GCS; Dad explained that, with Paula’s help, Mom had given it to him a few years back as a gift …

… and that he’d love to hear it on their instrument.

As I played through it (slowly, but more or less accurately) I glanced over at them a few times. They sat holding hands on the couch, looking serenely happy – at enjoying music together, at the memories the piece conjured, at the gifts given by two of their children. When I finished I handed the music to Dad and he practically shoved it back, telling me earnestly that he really wanted me to have it. This made me sad, since it implied that he knew his playing days were over, but of course I accepted. Now I treasure this memento of the last time I saw my parents together.

---

Here’s a performance of “On the Trail” from the Grand Canyon Suite, played by the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein conducting.

An aside: This memory helped dry my tears, so I’ll share it:

… and speaking of Leonard Bernstein, he was Mom and Dad’s rural neighbor when they lived in Fairfield, Connecticut, from the late 1970s through 1995. I found out the hard way, as I’d gone out for a long walk in their lovely neighborhood of Greenfield Hill, with its woodsy property, twisty-turny roads, and clusters of dogwood trees. As the sun prepared to set, I realized I was lost. Hopelessly, pathetically lost. Remember, this was back before cell phones, so my only hope was to stop and knock on a door.

When I talked myself into doing just that, I noticed a name on the rural mailbox. Dear heavens, this was Leonard Bernstein’s house! That knocked some sense into me and I was able to say a little prayer, retrace my steps, and find Mom and Dad’s house again. They were tickled that I’d “found” Mr. Bernstein’s country dwelling and suggested I try again another day, just in case piano music was wafting out of an open window.

But with my crummy sense of direction, do you think I could ever find it again?

Please subscribe below and we’ll email you a notice with each new story: