You can still hear the notes. The chords stir you; they make you light, make you warm. But the music is quieter than it was a year ago. Listening takes focus. The buzz in your ears gets worse by the day.

You’ve tried doctors. They told you the truth that you’ve been trying to hide. Your hearing is eroding. Bad today. Gone in a year.

There is an ache in your heart, a hollowness. You cannot imagine life without Ella Fitzgerald and Judy Garland.

Life without music is cold and gray, so you’ve been rejecting it, pretending it won’t happen because the students come every day, looking to you for guidance. They bring color. They bring hope.

Your student today is a prodigy; you knew that the first time you heard her play. She has perfect pitch like you did at her age. She picked up Chopin and Bill Evans with ease, and she improvises. She adapts. She’s not playing by memory alone. She improves almost faster than you can teach her.

You put a vinyl record on the player, and you sit on the piano bench with her. Together, you listen to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. The high notes are lost to you, but her face beams when she hears them.

“Can you play this for me?” She asks.

Beethoven was deaf and managed to compose entire symphonies. You’re not him, but maybe you can give this girl the education she deserves. “Today, I can.”