I close my eyes and let the power and the ear splitting sound of the horn shake my body; shaking along with it the thoughts from my mind that always make it too hard to be conscious.

I used to be afraid of the mighty trains that ran along side our farm for as long as I can remember. "Don't you get to close", mom would say, "It's dangerous". Now it just seems too intriguing to ignore. How easy it would be to lean a little to close and to let the train take it all away as it does the coal from the mines out West.

You know, I never used to think of taking my own life. I guess that was before I let the train, take Natalie's.

The train passes and I watch the back end of it get farther and farther away. I cross the yard back to our small farm house. There is nothing I can do to erase the pain. I wouldn't have a problem letting myself fall onto the tracks, but even I am not that selfish. It would kill my mother to have to go through that again.

I open the door and walk into the kitchen to find mother staring out the front window at the tracks. I know she hates it when I go to the train.

She turns around slowly.

"Will you play for me Julie?" She asks, not expecting an answer.

I shake my head and make my way to my room. The old piano that sits in the living room taunts me as I go past. Ever since the accident I couldn't stand to touch the keys.

"You could go somewhere Julie", they would tell me, "Leave this farm, make a name for yourself." I used to love it, practiced non-stop. I actually did want to go somewhere with it. Although the thing about it that I loved the most, was how Natalie loved it. Now that she is gone it is so hard to play. My baby sister, she was my life. She was just starting to talk. Play. That was one of her first words; she would walk to the piano and bang on the keys, "Play Julie." I would scoop her up onto my lap and start playing her favorites, nursery rhymes, and lullabies. It lit up her eyes.

I was practicing for my last piano exam. It was just me and Julie home; she was watching a movie in the kitchen. I was absorbed in my music. It was the whistle of the train that snapped me out of my zone. It was normal enough; there were three trains that passed everyday. There was something about that whistle though, it was different. It was an alarm. I immediately ran to the kitchen. When she wasn't there, it was like I already knew. The rest of that day, week, month is just a blur, I could never forgive myself. How could I make things better? There was no way to get back that day. It was over, and my piano dreams no longer seemed reasonable.

My mom thinks that if I start playing again I will be normal, I can escape the pain. Heal. She doesn't understand that that is how it happened, I was escaping, look what came of it. I try to please her, by doing more chores, making supper, anything I can that would help her out. I can't think of any more ways to make things better. She doesn't want any of that though. She just wants me to play. The only way she will be happy is if I am happy. She has already forgiven me, something I can't do for myself. She wants me to play because it used to make me content. She says that all she wants in the world is for me to be able to love playing again, and to still go for my dreams.

I turned off my light and lay down on my bed. Every time I close my eyes the music comes back to me, no matter how hard I try to suppress it. Then all of a sudden in my mind, along with the melodies and songs, I hear a small voice that says "Play".

I sit up. It was that little loving voice that used to be so familiar. I struggled to keep from breaking down. I had come to a realization. She was right. Play.

I now understood that my struggle to make life better, to make my mom happy, it was all pointless. There had always been one thing that knit this family together, that put a smile on everyone's faces and was the rhythm of our life. It was music. I was being the selfish one. To restore our life's rhythm, and the foundation of our everyday, our certainty that things will get better, I must play.

I wiped the small tears that were forming in my eyes went out to the piano and sat down on the wooden bench, which now seemed foreign to my body. I lifted the wooden cover and slid it back into its position. The black and white faces of the keys seemed to smile up at me. I smiled back, and looked at the small framed picture of Natalie that stood on top of the piano. Play.

I started out slow, with an old church hymn, but soon led it into a quick waltz. The pain and regret started to slide out of me, down my arms and out my fingers that were now dancing wildly across the keys. I began to laugh. Things would get better. Never back to how it was before of course, it would still be a trial waking up every day, but now that we had our music back, it would drive us, help us to heal, to love.

I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn and my mom is looking down at me, tears in her eyes, a smile on her face. I bury my face in her chest and she wraps her arms around me, everything would be okay. Healing no longer seemed a struggle; it was now just a process that I needed to follow, all the time moving along with the restoring rhythm of my keys.