Music is a Remedy

Silent Siren

“The world is cruel, the world is heartless, the world is hateful, and silence is its vessel. Fill the emptiness with the music of your heart. Fill it with sweet tunes to drown out the hate, the stress, the worry, everything. Find the good things in the world and treasure them, and never let them go, ever. If you do, the darkness will engulf you and take over, so save yourself, darling.”  Those were the mother’s last words before she was shot and killed, still looking into her daughter’s kind, brown eyes that matched her own. Even if the daughter was only a small child when she heard them, the words were as clear as glass in her memory.

The daughter was thirteen now. It had been eight years since she last saw her mother lying in a pool of blood with dark hair covering everything but her eyes. Her mother’s sweet words kept ringing in her head, again and again, over and over, nonstop. 

Even after so long, the moment still haunted her, inside and out. She gingerly touched the scar on her cheek, a forever reminder of how she would never heal from seeing something so painful at such a young age. 

She took her violin out from its case, an old violin that was her mother’s, and her mother’s before her, one that survived the horrific conditions it was forcefully played in. Even if it was a German-made violin, it was still her favorite. She took the bow in her right hand and placed the violin just above her collarbone. She took in a deep breath and began to play a song her mother taught her before she was even old enough to hold a violin. Her mother wrote the notes down so that she would be able to play it even after her mother was gone. The daughter no longer needed them. She knew the notes by heart even with her eyes closed, remembering every time she played it.

When she played, her heart and mind seemed to forget everything around her, filling her with a sense of comfort, as if her mother was still here, guiding her hands across the strings. She felt as if she was on air, looking up at the beautiful clear sky, her hand interlocking with her mother’s. A tear slipped down her face at the thought, though she didn’t realize it through her daze. 

Bang. The final shot. Although the war was over, the Nazis never forgot their goal. At least mother and daughter were finally together again.