Rock Isn't Dead

On March 9th, 2018 I was awoken suddenly at 1:14 am by the sound of a few notes played on my 12-year-old son's electronic keyboard in his room.

I waited a moment before getting up to investigate, just in case I was dreaming. Then I heard a note played a second time. I thought that maybe my son must be up, in which case it would have been very unusual. Our rooms were close together and I would have heard it had he been up.

I laid in bed a short moment, trying to figure out who was playing the keyboard at that time of night. The cat sometimes sleeps in his room so I rationalized that the cat decided to play a little night music. The notes, however, sounded too composed to be a random cat walk. Also, the cat had no history of jumping on the keyboard, it was not entirely sturdy enough to handle a pounce.

I decided to go investigate.

I wasn't worried, just curious, as I crept down our hallway to his room. I quietly peeked in to find that he was sound asleep. I used to work nights at a psychiatric hospital and it was part of my job to check on the patients throughout the night. I knew the signs of deep sleep and my son was definitely sleeping soundly.

After scanning the room and finding nothing amiss, I decided that maybe my son forgot to turn the keyboard off and it just sounded a note for no reason, maybe an electric issue or something of that nature. Eager to get back to bed, I went to my room. When I reached my doorway (only about 10 feet from my son's door) it dawned on me that his keyboard display was not lit up like it does when the keyboard unit is turned on.

I went back to his room for further investigation. I saw the cat awake on his bed, blinking sleepily but standing up and facing the keyboard. The cat is not nocturnal - when we turn in for the night he picks a room/human to sleep with and snuggles in for the duration, often curled into a ball on the bed. I thought it unusual for the cat to be staring at the keyboard so I walked over to the keyboard and pressed some keys. No sound came out, confirming that the power was turned off.

I checked my son again and he was softly snoring. I shrugged the incident off as unusual but not alarming, thus went back to bed.

The next morning, I woke my son up for school. As he rolled over in bed I saw the back of his tee-shirt and couldn't help but smile at the words printed on it - "ROCK ISN'T DEAD...it's just played by Ghost Of".

The shirt belonged to my deceased brother who had been in a band called "Ghost Of". He died suddenly and tragically in 2015. He loved music and his lifelong dream was to be in a band. He finally made his dream come true a few years before his death. My son had never worn that shirt before even though it had been in our possession for some time. It is curious that the first time my son wore that shirt I was awoken by the sound of a musical instrument in my son's room. But that wasn't the only coincidence.

My brother and I were very different people, he was charismatic and outgoing with many friends. I am a quiet introvert who prefers staying home rather than going out to parties. Despite our differences, we had two main things in common: a love of ghost stories and music. We would often sit around the table telling ghost stories and he would jokingly tell me that he would come back to visit me when he died.

Maybe it is true, "Rock isn't dead, it's just played by "Ghost Of".