A Girl, A Violin and a Dream

Prologue

My eyes are closed as if in anguish. And I hear it. A haunting. So great, so beautiful, it threatens to sever my soul from my body. I open my eyes, and realise an audience. The expressions plastered on their faces, mimicking what I feel inside. Disbelief, heart-break, wonder and absolute awe. It's only then I realise it's me. Me creating this heart-wrenching music. Me and my violin. I lose myself in the music. I close my eyes once again and let the music engulf me as it did the audience. I felt tears running from my eyes. As I finish, I realise I'm breathing really hard, eyes wide open, face tear stained. I gasp as I hear a chorus of applause and a blinding, white light, envelops my vision...And I jolt upwards in bed.

It was a dream. Damn it! I realised I was also crying in my sleep, I wiped the tears from my eyes with ferocity. I recognised the song. It's the song I'm meant to play for my final exam at my music school. It was the performance that would decide my future. Ms Janet had been recommending some songs I should play, but none of them sounded right. Then I remembered a song my mother and I used to play together when I was ten years old. I wasn't very good at first but she kept insisting I continue. "After all," she'd say, "practice makes perfect". I'd laugh at her cheesiness. She'd sit at her grand piano, and I'd stand next to it with my violin and we'd play for hours at a time. And when I got tired, I'd lay down on the couch while she continued, until I fell asleep. But that was what felt like another life, a distant memory, before the car accident that left mother in a coma.

I used to sit by her hospital bed in which she lay as still as a statue, and play that very same song over and over, begging her to wake up so we could play it together. It sounded empty and alone without her, until my Aunt Mary came to take me home. Four months after the accident my Aunt came into my bedroom and woke me. Her tear stained face looking down at me. She told me that the doctors had just called that something had happened. She said mum died in her sleep just over an hour ago. My body went rigged, I could feel the tears pouring from my eyes. My aunt tried to tell me everything would be okay, she said it over and over, but it was lost with the sound of her own crying.

I never knew my father. Mother told me he died in a fire 6 months before I was born. All I knew about him was his name, Luke. Mother used to say I was just like him. Gentle-hearted and strong willed. I used to feel proud of that, but then when mum died... I crumbled to pieces. I didn't feel strong, I felt weak. I knew my mother and father would be disappointed but I didn't care. I couldn't stop the tears from pouring down my face. I was an eleven year old who had just lost her mother and never knew her father. I was lost. I didn't pick up my violin for months, wouldn't go near the piano, wouldn't even listen to music. They were sentimental objects reminding me of a life I once shared with my mother, but could never have again, could never have her again.

The first time I picked up my violin after mum died, I was sitting in my room reading a book to pass the time until I had to go to a friend's party, it was only a few weeks ago I started hanging out with them again. My aunt came into my and sat at the foot of my bed. She had taken custody of me since mums passing. She told me, "Your mother wouldn't want you to give up music. Music had always been a part of her. A part she shared with few others, only her daughter." With that she walked out quietly, and shut the door softly. She was right, I realised. When mum played her music, she became her music. Losing music was like losing a piece of mum, losing the very little of her I had left. So with that decided, I got off my bed, dropped my book and walked to my closet. I hesitated a bit to open it but put it aside and threw open the doors. I found my violin in its case, under boxes of old shoes, and stacks of magazines I used to read. I placed it on the bed and pulled it out of its case.