Life Goes On

I stand behind the door apprehensively. The beige room and the faulty flickering bulb above me seem to warn me
not to trespass any further. Sweat forms on my palms and my insides turn upside down. Even though I have visited
Meg several times, each visit I become more nervous. After being so used to hearing the lively melody of her piano
which always floated out of our living room, the now constant deafening silence sends my head spinning. It seems
like she’s deteriorating every day since she moved here, and the guilt eats away at me day and night.

My grandson stands next to me, he just finished his psychology degree and wants to see her too. Just before we
enter, he mentions something about healing with music. The words fly over my head. I struggle to pay attention to
anything nowadays when her declining state is all I think about. He’s dressed in an old-fashioned style, ‘Old Money’
he calls it, and it reminds me of something I wore in my youth. The cable-knit sweater, beige chinos, and riding cap
were almost identical to the ones I wore on our honeymoon in Paris when the winding winter wind would have
made the vacation unbearable had we not been so deeply in love. Now, only flakes of her memory remain, slowly
blown away by the winds of time.

The door opens with a complaining groan. The retirement home ought to oil it, but then again, why would they? She
seldom leaves her room and apart from her carers, only I still visit her daily. Everyone around her is slowly giving up
on her, even though they don’t admit it, they see her as dead weight, and try to forget her existence the same way
she has forgotten theirs.

I see her lying on her bed. Her thin figure which is swallowed by the quilt emphasises how frail and fragile she has
become, where a strong gust of wind would send her falling. She gazes at me blankly, her once warm and inviting
face is now cold and blank. I have become a stranger to her. The realisation pierces my skin like a dagger, and I feel
my morale trickling away. The room seems to close in, squeezing my soul from my body, making me hyper-aware of
that damned clock, and the non-stop tick…tick…tick. I try to speak but the air catches in my throat. Even though my
glasses have fogged up from the tears falling down my cheeks, I can still see that same blank stare always reminding
me that what was, can never be retrieved.

An ear-piercing shriek echoes behind me. My grandson wheels in the old piano that has sat in storage for years. Its
wheels squeal with protest with every push and a coat of dust covers the faded mahogany wood and the splitting
faux leather stool. The lid groans with resistance as it is lifted, which reveals the pale ivory keys that have not been
played in years. Between this confusion, I see Meg slowly rise for the first time in years and stumble onto the dusty
stool.

***

A stranger walks in the door. I can’t remember when I last had visitors. In fact, these days only the grey haze clings to
my mind and clouds my memories. Memories are precious things. I think I used to remember most of my previous
years, but now only fragments and pieces of my past life can be sifted out from the murky river of time. The old man
looks sad. His eyes look familiar. Maybe I have seen him before. I reach for the piece to this puzzle but it fades into
the depth of my mind.

I should probably greet him. But I cannot find a reason I should care. I try to doze off to the hypnotic ticking of the
clock when it is interrupted by a creak that sends a chill down my spine. An old piano has been dragged in. How do I
know what this is? I have never seen it before, but I move to it, like a moth drawn to a flame. The worn-down ivory
keys are coated in dust, but it does not matter. Something in my mind clicked. I knew what to play from years of
repetition; Comptine d'un autre été.

My fingers effortlessly dance across the keys of the piano, letting the music wash over me and the grey haze that
blurs my memories. For the first time in years, I remember not everything, but enough. I remember the night of my
wedding, when I played this piece with my husband as newlyweds, deeply in love with the whole world in front of us.
I gaze back at the man. The music washes over me and I see he’s no longer a stranger, but my husband. His face has
aged, with wrinkles and white hair from the stress over the years, but his unmistakable green eyes are still full of life
and love. He sits next to me as we play the final note, as I whisper our wedding vows in his ear.

I may not always love you,

 But long as there are stars above you,

You never need to doubt it,

I'll make you so sure about it,

God only knows what I'd be without you.

***

As I see the light in her eyes slowly fade again, the tears of sorrow are no longer so painful.

Writer’s Statement

The short film which I chose to transform into my narrative Life Goes On was Aiden Gibbon’s short film The Piano.
Similar to Gibbons’ film which is targeted towards mature audiences who struggle with aging, I have written my
narrative for the same audience. Hence, I have characterised my protagonist as an elderly man who reminisces
about when his partner did not have dementia. Gibbons utilises the diegetic music of the piano’s sombre soundtrack
to evoke melancholy within the audience, as well as forming a link to the stories the old man recounts to his
grandson. In my story Life Goes On, I maintained the idea of the connection between memory and music by
demonstrating the power of music and its ability to help regain lost memories. The purpose of my narrative was to
transform the text into a comment on the hardships of living with dementia or knowing a loved one who suffers
from dementia. To achieve this, I employed dual perspectives, where Meg is an unreliable narrator, which is denoted
by italics to illustrate the difficulties of living with dementia.

Gibbons utilises a cyclical piece of music where the final note played at the end of the film is the same note that the
film begins with. This serves as a symbol for the circle of life and along with the manipulation of the musical tones
and tempo, it reflects the old man’s emotions facing the challenges in his life. In my narrative, I capture the same
idea by characterising the grandson wearing a “cable-knit sweater, beige chinos, and riding cap”, which is what the
grandpa wore “in [his] youth” to convey to the reader the similarity between the grandson and the grandpa in their
youth. Moreover, Gibbons in the first scene begins with a long shot framing an old man sitting alone at a piano,
where the diegetic music being played in a minor key evokes a sombre tone in the audience. This along with the
mise-en-scene placing dark shadows surrounding the piano conveys the idea of isolation. Similarly, I utilise the motif
of the neglected piano that is covered in “a coat of dust” to symbolise the same way Meg has been isolated and
neglected by the retirement home and her family.

An element of the short film I captured was the idea of the significance of the past, which Gibbons achieved by
employing numerous flashbacks. I have also demonstrated this idea through flashbacks that illustrate their
“honeymoon in Paris” and when the couple were newlyweds “with the whole world in front of [them]”. This lexical
choice creates a reminiscent tone for the reader which conveys how significant this memory is to the protagonist,
who struggles with letting go of the past. Through colour imagery, I juxtapose Meg’s view of the world before she
regains her memories as a “grey haze” to when she recollects her past after recognising her husband’s
“unmistakable green eyes”, which symbolise her newfound youthfulness after she regains her memories. This
conveys to the reader that the loss of memories changes an individual’s perception of life. This idea is similarly
examined by Gibbons who portrays the old man’s wife who has passed away as colourless and transparent which is
juxtaposed to the grandson who is characterised to wear a green shirt to represent his liveliness. In addition, I was
inspired by the absence of dialogue in Gibbons’ film and limited the dialogue present in my story. The only dialogue
present are verses from the Beach Boy’s song Only God Knows, which are the old couple’s wedding vows. By alluding
to the song, which was released in 1966, this intertextuality allows the reader to infer the age of the couple and
when they got married.

Overall, my narrative Life Goes On was effective in exploring the idea of the circle of life and being a comment on the
hardships of living with dementia.