Echoes Of The Life That Was

Sat in a grand concert hall, mesmerised by the magical sounds rising up from the Ukrainian orchestra in front of me, I was brought back to some of my teenage years when for a few hours every week, I would occupy one of those orchestral chairs. It’s an experience like no other, creating music with others. If you have never played your instruments whilst tens of others played theirs in sync with yours, frankly I think it’s unimaginable. But back when I was 12, 13, all the way up to 17, I was lucky to get to experience that unique type of magic on a weekly basis.

Every since, I’ve found myself reflecting on the rich childhood my parents created for me. Sitting in that padded little chair with around 2.000 others, I felt my mum so acutely. For this was part of her legacy. All the years we poured over theatre programs, the evenings we spent watching anything from retellings of MacBeth to The Lion King Musical to modern dance and classic ballet and a million things I can sadly no longer recall. All those hours instilled in me a love that now, at 32, still leads me to seek out shows and experiences. That allows me to draw others into that world.

I was lucky. My parents brought me to the theatre, to music school. They bought me my first violin, smiled rather than frowned when I wanted to take piano classes, too. When there were no more swimming diplomas for me to obtain, they took me to diving school where my mum dutifully signed up, too, so I’d be allowed into the open waters as a minor. They supported nearly every avenue of exploration, curiosity and self-development I wanted to walk down. I had more hobbies than time and gosh, my life was rich in that regard.

And then I moved abroad. And then mum got sick. And I moved back. And mum died. And life came to a crashing halt.

Playing piano felt painful as much as it was soothing, every note the echo of a memory of what no longer was and would never be. Every visit to the theatre was a trip down memory lane and sometimes those trips left me bruised and scathed for days. Diving suddenly seemed to expensive a luxury now that we’d lost our main source of income and besides, dad would never come and I couldn’t imagine going alone, so my wetsuit no longer dripped and after a few years my mask was tossed out, the rubber having cracked in its years of abandonment.

My parents set me up for a life filled with magic, experiential riches and opportunities I only know how to appreciate as an adult. But then the foundations of my world crumbled and without those in place, all that magic disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Grief at any age but especially when we’re young and still living the fast pace of life knocks the wind out of our sails. It steals our momentum and has the force to eradicate anything we’d built up until then. And it’s not a fresh start. It’s more akin to opening your eyes and finding a hurricane has torn over the lands that you call home, leaving nothing in its wake but pieces you can recognise as your former life but never put back together in their former configuration.

You can hold them and treasure them, but they are a part of the past now. Inspiration rather than building blocks.

And yet, despite the wreckage, I’ve come to realise that even though the pieces of my former life can’t be reassembled as they once were, they still belong to me. They’re fragments of a past rich with opportunity, exploration, love and expansiveness. Grief may have taken the structure, but it hasn’t erased the essence of what my parents instilled in me.

These days, the pain of memory doesn’t always overwhelm me. Instead, it often walks alongside a quiet gratitude—a recognition that while I can no longer share these moments with my parents, I can still seek out the magic they loved and passed on to me, and pass it on to others. It’s a different kind of inheritance, perhaps one marked more by absence than presence, but it’s mine to carry forward.

Maybe I’ll sit in an orchestra chair again once day. Strap on a diving mask or sail a boat out to open sea. Explore what curiosity remains for the life that once was. And even if I don’t, I will still hear the music, still feel the pull of the water, still find myself drawn to those experiences that made life feel so full. And in those moment, feel some of the essence of my parents and my childhood live on, their memories alive even if they are not.