| Sunny Side Up
with Kathleen Gibson Nov. 5-08 Thank God for good old soldiers On most any Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, at Regina�s Wascana Rehab Centre, you can hear music. Not just any music�an old soldier�s music. On those days a man called Bus walks into the Centre and sits himself down at the bench in front of a mellow maple piano. Then, for a sweet half-hour, he lets his music out. His impeccable renditions of wartime songs, and jazz and pop tunes that accompanied the healing post-war years, have made that piano sing for fifteen years. The Preacher and I heard Bus often during our stay at Wascana. We�d come to Saskatchewan�s finest repository for the nearly dead, badly broken, and critically confused (the Preacher among them) to help him gain back what the pirates of West Nile Disease had stolen. Bus�s music helped more than he ever knew. The piano sits beside windows that stretch a good ways down the brick building and overlook the courtyard with the blue-floored fountain for a centrepiece. Bus�s tunes waft through the spacious concourse, bounce off those windows, and soar to the vaulted glass roof. There they join the sunshine and become the spirit of optimism itself. It rains back down and washes over listeners, healing things music alone can heal. When we first met Bus, he finished playing, unfolded his considerable length from behind the piano, and walked over to where the Preacher and I sat. �Bus Hillyard,� he said, holding out his hand. �Hill and yard, just like it sounds.� His manner and voice were as gracious as his music. Bus�s weekly trio of half-hour 4 p.m. piano concerts rose from his visits to a good friend, a patient on Wascana�s veteran�s ward . They�d soldiered together in the war. In their convoy, at every new stop on the front, the piano got unloaded first. His friend had been badly injured, and suffered from his wounds the rest of his life. When he eventually became a patient at Wascana, Bus visited him often. For old-time sake, Bus played while his friend listened. After his comrade-at-arms died, Bus stopped coming. Then the centre�s administration office hunted him down. �People are asking about you. Won�t you come back?� Bus returned, simple as that. He hasn�t stopped since. Sometimes people listen, as we did, and sometimes no one does. �I play extra firmly,� he said, �because I know they can hear me on the wards. Some can�t come out, but they enjoy it.� A few of the residents complain that he never changes his repertoire. Most don�t mind at all. I don�t think old soldiers have this Christ-like quality exclusively, but I find it most often shining there, behind the medals: the determination to keep shooting for a better world, a greater good; to push past their own battles�and Bus has had many�and lift a fallen comrade, whether at home or on the front. Thank God for the example of good old soldiers. I pray to be like them. �2008, Kathleen Gibson Respond Home |
 |