My Friend, Bunny

Today I played piano for the memorial service of my friend, Bunny; and, since only a few of you ever got to meet her, I thought I'd tell you about her. In this pic, she is the woman wearing red. These are my piano students in our Mar, '09, recital. Bunny took lessons from me for a couple years-- and her lessons were always a bright spot in my week. She was a hilariously funny, spunky woman.

In 1992, she'd had a brain injury and then went into a coma for 19? days. They preformed a craniotomy on her, and no one thought she'd live thru it. She did, and she went thru a long recovery in which she totally relearned how to walk and talk, etc. She told me about this several times-- as in, "You think I'm hard to understand now? You should have heard me then!"

She went on to live 18 more years-- to live on her own, to drive a car, and to play piano.

When she moved up here from Florida 3 or 4 years ago, she called me and asked to take lessons. These lessons were pretty different from teaching any of my other students. She was in it purely to have fun; she enjoyed playing piano. In fact, she had to move to an assisted living facility for the last month or so of her life, and the one thing she insisted on taking was her digital piano. I'm really not sure she advanced much at all while I was teaching her-- my main job was to find her new music that she'd enjoy playing, and to help her play it.

Her half hour lessons pretty much always took about an hour-- if you count the time it took to help her in the door, for her to get settled in my house, for her to switch her glasses, for her to tell me stories in between songs, for her to interact with whichever of our kids were present, for her to use the bathroom, for me to turn her car around because I was so afraid of her backing out of our driveway, for me to help her out the door and off the front porch step. She could not walk up our sidewalk forwards, she always backed up it. Sometimes in the summer there are flowers hanging over the sidewalk-- when her backside would run into them, she'd say something like, "Oh, hello, there!" :)

Bunny loved red. LOVED red. She always had bright red lipstick on, not always just on her lips. She loved earrings. Once in a while was missing one or had a mismatched pair on. She loved hats-- always wore one to church. She also wore wigs sometimes, some pretty interesting looking ones. :)

She was a nurse, so she was very interested in all the medical details when I was pregnant with Micah, and his birth, and when he was young. She loved interacting with all the kids-- she was so silly-- gave them small presents and snacks a few times.

Micah and I went to visit her 2 days before she died. She was unresponsive after the last stroke-- eyes shut, no talking-- but she started moving around when we sang for her. Of course, she didn't look at all like herself that day-- really needed some red lipstick-- but I'm glad I went just for a few minutes. She was a special, gutsy lady that loved life, but totally was not afraid to die.

Her last lesson with me was last Nov, I believe. One lesson day, she called me on the phone and was making no sense-- I called her daughter-- they found she'd had another stroke. A few months after that, when I visited her, she told me she was going to start lessons again this fall, after she'd recovered sufficiently. Well, I suppose maybe she is taking piano lessons again now, at least once she's done with the initial arrival celebration in heaven. :)