Archives for March 13, 2020

Mrs. T opened her eyes this morning for the first time since her double-lung transplant surgery. She appeared to respond when I asked her to blink if she could hear my voice and understand what I was saying. We’re not sure whether that might have been wishful thinking on my part, but the doctors continue to be satisfied with her progress to date, and I’m not complaining.

I sat by her ICU bed for a couple of hours, talking quietly about what had happened during the past couple of weeks and making reassuring noises. I also played a piece of music on my laptop, a beautiful little piano solo by Aaron Copland called “Down a Country Lane” which we both love and which was performed thirteen years ago at our wedding. It struck me that if you were gradually coming out of a protracted coma, that might be a nice thing to hear.

We still have a dauntingly long row to hoe before we get back home again, much less to Sanibel Island—but Mrs. T took a giant step in the right direction today.

UPDATE ON SATURDAY MORNING: I just got a completely unambiguous I-hear-you eyeblink response from Mrs. T when I asked if she could hear me and knew who I was. Yesterday I wasn’t sure—today I am.

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Aaron Copland’s “Down a Country Lane,” played by Leo Smit:

“All of us—the public, critics, and composers themselves—spend far too much time worrying about whether a work is a shattering masterpiece. Let us not be so self-conscious. Maybe in thirty years’ time very few works that are well known today will still be played, but does that matter so much? Surely out of the works that are written some good will come, even if it is not now; and these will lead on to people who are better than ourselves.”

Benjamin Britten (interviewed by Edmund Tracey, Sadler’s Wells Magazine, Autumn 1966)