GG sighting...

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

No, not anything in the nature of an Elvis sighting.  This is something I
found in the in-flight magazine _Hemispheres_, United Airlines, Sept 1998. 
It's a two-page "personal growth" article by Barbara Abercrombie, "The
Mother I Always Wanted,"  recalling the last year of her mother's life,
describing her lifestyle.  Abercrombie teaches creative writing at the
University of California at Los Angeles.  Excerpts: 

-----

(...) My mother died last winter at the age of 87.  She gave a piano
recital for 60 people in her retirement hotel four weeks before she died. 
For an hour she played Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy, and Mozart.  "Everybody
plays the 'Moonlight Sonata' at a different speed," she told me afterward
when I said I'd never heard it played more beautifully.  "I finally
decided just to do it with feeling and forget the tempo." 

When she went into the hospital 10 days later, I brought her CD player,
and she listened to Glenn Gould's Beethoven piano sonatas over and over. 
But she wasn't just listening;  she was working--figuring out how to
improve her own playing.  "I play this part too fast,"  she said.  "Oh,
listen to how he does it!" 

(...) [Recalling her personal history with her mother before that]

(...) I eventually persuaded her to move to California to be near me.  The
piano came with her.  When she felt strong enough, she would practice up
to six hours a day.  "That's what keeps a person going," she told me. 
"You need a goal every morning, something you've got to work hard at." 
She would tape herself playing and then listen, over and over, figuring
out how to improve. 

That's how Al, who would become her boyfriend, discovered her--in the
lobby of the retirement hotel playing the piano.  He also played, not
classical but show tunes.  "She was so beautiful," he told me recently. 
"I never thought I'd have such a thing happen to me.  I was just waiting
around to die, and there she was."  In this youth-obsessed state of
California, I love to hear him talk about loving my mother--how physically
beautiful he found her. 

They were romantic together.  He encouraged her to take long walks, and
they'd hold hands; her health improved.  They read the newspaper together
every morning, had cocktails in the evening; they laughed a lot.  They
played the piano for each other.  For the New Year's Eve dance at their
hotel, my mother thought she'd save money by wearing a matronly
20-year-old blue dress.  I dragged her off to the mall, and she bought a
red silk dress, size six, slit up to the knee. 

(...) There were many trips to the hospital.  "I have no idea what keeps
her going," her doctor said to me in awe.  "She's a miracle.  Her heart is
so enlarged it hardly works." 

Each time she escaped the hospital, she loved life even more.  "I'm just
not ready to go yet," she'd say.  The hospital sent social workers to
interview her, trying to discover her secret.  "They want to know about my
lifestyle," she told me, rolling her eyes and laughing. (...) 

-----

Bradley Lehman ~ Harrisonburg VA, USA ~ 38.45716N+78.94565W
bpl@umich.edu ~ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/ 

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music 
and cats." - Albert Schweitzer