I'll never forget that early Sunday morning in August. The sky was a drooping gray canvas over Baltimore City. The birds had just begun to sing a counterpoint of notes as if to break through the sky. Suddenly the telephone's rude ring cut into my reverie. It was my brother Jim, and I knew instantly something was wrong. Jim rarely called me. Then I heard those dreaded words: "Our Dad died last night."

My first reaction was disbelief. How could Iver be gone (I called my father by his first name in his later years, for we were such close friends), Iver, who had always been so strong, who comforted me even when Alzheimer's Disease raged through his body and mind like a merciless midwestern storm?

My father had started a dairy in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1930 it was a small business with only three workers and one milk route. Gradually, he built it up to a huge milk processing plant serving all of Iowa. As a child, I walked carefully through the dairy, where water slid in rivers over the tile floors. I was fascinated by the roar of the machinery, milk gushing like gossip. There were rainbows of tulips surrounding the plant in spring, and people came from miles around to take pictures. I was in awe of Iver for building something so big -- I was so proud of my Dad.

Now, in Baltimore on that Sunday morning, I felt like a mechanical doll as I got dressed, made plane reservations to Des Moines for Iver's funeral. There was a tight fist in my chest. I must cancel my turn to play the piano for the morning service at church today, I thought. But Iver seemed to be talking to me, comforting me, telling me not to grieve for him, to go ahead and do what I had planned. So I played piano at church, then took the long rough flight to Des Moines. The fist in me grew tighter, harder. I was still a mechanical doll in a dream.

On the night that Iver's body was to be viewed at the funeral home, I arrived early. I was alone in the room with my father, who seemed to rest peacefully in his casket. His face, though, was strangely pale and waxen. The electronic organ pumped "Sweet Hour of Prayer" through the speakers. Gradually the people began to come, hundreds of them over a four-hour period -- dairy employees, people from church, neighbors -- all to pay tribute to my Dad. They stood in little groups and chatted -- a cacophony of words and laughter -- while Iver lay lifeless, silent in his casket.

The large church was packed for the funeral. Again, I was a mechanical doll walking with my family down the aisle. At the end of the service the whole congregation sang the hymn, "Jesus Is Coming Again," a tune that Mother and I sung with Iver many times in his nursing-home room.

Now, there was nothing to do but go home. But where was home? My mother lived in a retirement home cottage. My plane for Baltimore didn't leave until the next day. The only place that was home in Iowa was the large white house on John Patterson Road where I grew up. It stood fully furnished but empty of people. It was waiting for me.

Inside, the rooms were filled with dramas. The reflections in the windows were eyes in the past. Memories stepped out of every photograph. My piano was still where it always had been, the one where I played Mozart, Brahms, my own compositions. Iver grew to love my original pieces in his later years. I sank down into my father's favorite chair and suddenly flood gates let loose the tears. The fist in my chest slowly unclenched. I must have cried for hours.

"Daddy, the lie I told . . . "

You sit on the edge of my bed,

telling me God forgives

as far as the east is from the west . . .

Our walks at dusk, the sun's

burning face peering through the weeds . . .

At the top of the hill I turn and wave to you

and you wave back, your silver hair a crown. . . .

My mind drifted. In the late '60s, there was distance between us: my hours of piano practice every day, the metronome swinging in lonely arcs, Iver's time on church boards, the late-night clash of TV with piano scales. Then came my long illness of over two years.

My mind landed me for a moment in 1978. I had just been released from the hospital, and I had a feeling of renaissance, of beginning anew. Iver and I became very close during that time and he had given me a new bright blue Toyota to celebrate my recovery and my ability to drive again. I drove it proudly.

One day a boyfriend and I had a quarrel. A few hours after he had left, I went out to drive my new Toyota, still very upset. Clouds had gathered in a dark purple wound in the north. I was fascinated by the sky, and had always loved summer storms in Iowa. I began to drive straight north toward the storm. Wild flowers grew in clusters along the rough narrow highway. I hummed to the radio.

Then the rain started. It hit the car like bullets. The lightning was like a dazzling sword striking the pavement ahead, and thunder claps began to bounce off the windshield like ping-pong balls. Suddenly, the road ahead was flooded with a threatening river. Water crept into my car. I must turn around, I thought. Before I knew it, my car was swept into a ditch on its side like a frightened lame horse, water madly gushing into it. I managed to get out just in time.

Some people were kind enough to pick me up on the road and they took me to their home nearby. After drying off, I called Iver and he came up from Des Moines right away. He didn't say anything, except that he was glad I wasn't hurt. He arranged to have my car towed, took care of my insurance to pay for damages. Some time later, when my father drove my repaired car back home from the shop, I said, "Iver, that was so awful!" "Well, maybe you learned a lesson from it," he replied. "Maybe you can help me some day."

I never forgot that.

A few years later I moved from Iowa to Baltimore to further my musical career. I frequently went home for visits, and one such occasion was a hot, humid summer day. Iver had just hosed down the flower beds. We sat in the living room drinking ice tea, the afternoon humming with birds and insects, and he told me how something had struck him in the back of the neck one night, something powerful, like a fish thrashing on a boat dock.

In later years Iver seemed to recover, coming home from work, patting the sides of his easy chair. I made the piano sing. Branches by the window were ancient hands applauding.

Some time later we found out what was weighing down Iver, a dreaded, ugly illness -- Alzheimer's. He became bedridden in a dingy nursing-home room in Des Moines where he and my mother resided. Often, when I visited them, I would give a piano recital, sitting at the piano, my stomach pumping butterflies. The clock wound into the past to the strains of "Clair de Lune" and "Liebestraum." The music's magic sent the people applauding, but I would always run down the hall to Iver's room, knowing that an awful disease kept him away.

Iver would be in his room, his eyes shut like seashells. Mother once said that at night he applauded in his sleep, remembering )) my piano recitals. In the day, the sun set afire through the window Iver's white nest of hair. Sometimes he asked for a ride in his wheelchair -- his new car -- and I wheeled him up and down the drab halls, he raising his arms, yelling, "Faster, faster, faster! . . ."

I was still crying in our old house, but my mind kept racing through the years. Back in the early '60s, we had an apartment along the shore in Laguna Beach, California. Iver and I were swimming in the ocean one summer day when I was on vacation from college. A huge dark, murky wave rolled over my head. After it had broken, pounding like a hammer on the shore, I found I could no longer touch bottom with my toes. The current began to pull me under, surrounding me like a dark veil. Then I felt Iver's arm around me, holding me up, coughing and choking, holding me up to the sky.

We walked back to our apartment, our feet making maps in the sand. At that age, forgetting how to swim was totally embarrassing to me. I made Iver promise he would never tell anyone what had happened, and he never did.

My mind drifted again. I remembered that time at dusk, 1970, when I had just finished giving a piano lesson. I stood at the top of the steps leading to the back porch. Iver sat in his chair, dozing off. His newspaper had dropped with the last cry of a black bird. I longed to tell him something, to sit across the table from him over a cup of coffee, the clock ticking through an early summer evening. I stared at him, wanting to shake his shoulder like rain from a tree.

But the possibility of sharing conversation was long gone, and now, with Iver gone too, I only had grief. Alone in the house, still crying rivers, Iver was talking to me, comforting me, dusk reigning from his white hair. The setting sun cast memories on the papered walls. He was telling me not to grieve for him, not to cry, but to play the piano once more.

I remembered when I played "Amazing Grace" for Iver in the nursing home, how he had held out his hand to me, a dreaming look in his eyes. This could be the beginning of a piece in memory of Iver. I sat down at the piano and began to play.