Mentor

"Memorial"

The sound of loud chatter has become too familiar to me, for the past week and it was slowly driving me insane. Since the arrival of my mother, the house has become a stopping point for old friends and people helping with the memorial. We had planned that the memorial will happen the next week and today was the due date, the date of the memorial. I had spent it with my Mother, bonding while preparing while she reunited with a couple of people when I was busy with something else which I appreciated because she respected me enough. On Sunday after her magical arrival, we spent the whole day catching up, on Monday we said our final goodbyes to my Father and it was the hardest thing to do but Candice was there reminding us that Dad was going to help a lot of people who needed help, on Tuesday we mourned and Mother had a few people over to help plan the memorial and then the rest of the week came and go and today was Sunday, the day of the memorial.

When we sent out invitations we had informed everyone that this was a celebration of his life because people who knew him knew that he was full of life and always happy therefore it would be beautiful if we celebrated. The theme was pastel, which was my mother’s idea, the venue was the garden that my father had created in hour of his family and everything else was planned by my mother.

Getting ready for this wasn’t as lovely as I thought it would be, I was officially saying the last goodbye to the love of my life and it was hard. I thought that I had already said goodbye to him and this was going to be breeze but slowly but surely reality was kicking and it scared me to the point of medication. I had taken a few of my anxiety medication, which I stopped taking a few months ago because I got better. I wasn’t ready to see everyone who would remind me of Dad but he had a lot of friends and deserve to celebrate his life too.
“It’s time, let’s go welcome our guests” My mother said while standing near the door, I didn’t know how long she has been there but she might have noticed how overwhelmed I was “Look, I know that this is hard on you but everything will be fine, he is at peace now with the knowledge that he has helped people even in his death bed because your father was a super hero” she chuckled and walked towards me “He loved you with all his soul, might and heart and he knew that you were strong enough to handle this” she kissed my temple then left me alone with my thoughts.

The words that my mother left me with made me feel better about today and I knew that she was trying to be strong for me when she was just as emotional. I have only seen Anna twice this past week and during those times she made me forget that I was losing my father for eternity this time and this time I won’t even be using him as my human diary but I longed for Angie, I hadn’t seen her since the dinner neither have we communicated but what hurts the most was that left me without a word or a proper goodbye and in my mind I had concluded that she wasn’t better than my mom when she had left me for over a year. Not only did I need her as a mentor but I needed her as my friend, the friend who helped me when I was drunk, the friend who taught me a lot of things and mostly the wisest woman I knew.

I walked to the entrance and the setting was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, there were pastel and white balloons surrounding the area, there were garden chairs perfectly placed and there were multiple pictures of my father but one thing that stood out was the garden. The infusion of colours made everything seem ten times more magical which removed a huge chunk of anxiety from my mind. Seeing how everything was perfectly set made me realise that this indeed was a celebration of the life of someone who was basically an angel on earth.
For the past hour I had spent time greeting people and listening to them tell me that “Everything will be okay” or “Your father was an extraordinary man” and a very few said “Happy Tomas day” which made me feel somewhat better compared to those who were sad. I waited for Angelina to walk through the gate and hug me but she never showed up so when the event started all my focus was on the people who had a lot to say about my father, almost everyone had a corny joke to tell that my father told them once and everyone had a fun memory with him including the postman. The ceremony went smoothly without excessive tears and that was pleasing to my eyes and now it was time for me to say my goodbye and as I walked to the podium, I watched as my mother gave me a smile of security and when I looked at the person sitting on her right and there sat Angelina, she wore a pastel blue pant suit and she had her hair in a low pony tail. She had the right amount of jewellery but he beautiful face the centre piece of her look.