It Was A Good Show

The curtains have fallen. They have to pack their bags to leave. While I miss the performance, it was good while it lasted.

If life was an orchestra performance, my mum was the conductor. She trained and nurtured each performer with her belief and love. She made them believe that they were better than they ever thought they were. She brought out the best in their attitudes and abilities. Never once did she neglect a member of her orchestra.

She tapped on the strengths of each trombone player, each violinist, even the ones on the cymbals never felt left out. She created a tight-knit family on stage.

The worst player in the orchestra always made mistakes. Even during critical performances. But she practised with him time and again, never giving up on his potential.

I was the orchestra.

And all of a sudden, it was our final performance. The grand uplifting music came to a still. My mum took her final bow, and the show was over.

We panicked. No one knew what to do. Without my mum, the orchestra was a mess. People started breaking down, we didn’t know how to play together at all. Rehearsals fell apart, our harmony fled. The cog works of our music disappeared. Most importantly, we didn’t know what tunes to play nor how to work together. Members began to hate on the weaker players. They started to feel isolated. Some even left the orchestra. While the stronger ones attempted to pull the team together, everyone lacked that strong belief they once possessed.

It was chaos. The stage that was once bursting with life was a ghost town. A few loyal ones stayed behind, unable to abandon what was once the world to them. They missed her dearly and clung to the hope that she would return. They waited and waited, but she never came back.

Then one day, a violinist stepped up. He said: I’m going to learn how she did it. I’m going to be our conductor. And so, he pored over books on how to conduct an orchestra.

The tunes I play today are different. The skills we picked up over the past 8 years of practice were learned on our own. I never wanted to reinvent anything. But without a conductor, someone has to step up.