“Don’t leave me,” she said. In sleep she bound me by an oath to my answer.

A few days earlier she had a fall that triggered an acute sense of her fragility and vulnerability and isolation at age 83. She relived being alone and helpless and powerless for minutes that seemed like hours. She imagined terror, abandonment, death.

I didn’t leave her. I watched the powerful pain med gradually, in sleep, reduce the signs of her still powerful pain. I noticed as she relaxed a smile on her face, and, though out cold, her bare feet and toes, hanging over the bottom of the bed, moving, slowly purposefully moving.

Body straight and motionless, but her bare feet and toes, hanging out of her bed clothes over the bottom of the bed, moving. I had a sudden vision, a vision of them moving thoughtfully and contemplatively like the hands and fingers of a pianist over a keyboard.

I had a vision of her feet and toes as the hands and fingers of Duke Ellington slowly picking, pecking, coaxing out the mellow melody of, say, “Satin Doll,” “Mood Indigo,” “Prelude to a Kiss.”

I had a vision of her smiling inside – creating, composing – happily tinkling the pain away one note at a time. While creating beauty.

My way of coping with her condition.