The Un-Ending Adventures of Jenny Jumps

The Entertainer
December 7th, 2009

Sometime mid-nineties, the H-government decided it would be a good idea if all Ontario Secondary School students participated in a programme whereby they would all complete ten mandatory hours of community service per year.

Fortunately the York Region Separate School Board had long implemented the practice for grades eight through O.A.C.

A friend of my father’s mentioned a neighbour who was elderly and infirmed. She arranged a time for me to visit one Friday and that’s how I met Miss Dorothy Campbell, a long-retired elementary school teacher who lived alone in a small cottage in Keswick.

I visited Miss Campbell every Friday around 5 o’clock for almost two years. On that first Friday I discovered she had an antique upright grand piano, painted white with shedding ivories. On it sat pages and pages of tin pan piano / vocal scores. I picked up a piece on that first day, and enjoyed playing her piano very much. She enjoyed it too; so I returned each week to play for an hour.

She slept, or tried to tell me stories – but in her condition, she was hardly able to string together a coherent idea or sentence. Once she showed me the work she had done on putting together her memoirs. There were a few pages of short anecdotal paragraphs about her life, mirroring her regular inability to connect her thoughts.

The day came that I had to submit proof of my service, and it required me to have her fill out a form and sign her name. I left her with the booklet requesting information and explained the situation to her, before wandering off to play her piano in the adjacent sunroom. She sat on the couch beside the telephone in her pyjamas while she would listen to my playing.

At the end of the hour, I picked up the booklet where she had filled out a response to the question, “How has the student contributed to the organisation?” She wrote, “Jennifer’s playing is developing well. She has a good sense of rhythm.”

Later that month I returned as scheduled but the house was locked and empty. I visited her neighbour – that friend of my father’s – and she told me that Miss Campbell had been taken to a Home for the Elderly some 25 km away in a neighbouring town. Unfortunately, our communities did not have public transit available yet, and I was too young to drive, so I did not have the opportunity to visit her again for a long time.

Some months later I visited her in the Home, where her health had clearly rapidly declined. When she saw me, she did not recognize me, but new I must be familiar because I brought her a gift and flowers. She spoke to me, and told me stories and just before I left, she told me something very special. She said it was very special. She bragged,

“I used to have a private pianist, who would play for me in my home every Friday” – she smiled, and so did I.