The chirping of birds and the barking of dogs woke her. She was still a bit sleepy and light headed after last night. Her body was well rested, but her soul was tired of all the drama from the past few days. While she dragged her body out of bed and looked at the time, she ran to the bathroom.
“I can’t believe it’s past 7 already,” she moaned to herself. “Why didn’t anybody wake me?”
In less than an hour she was done and headed downstairs to see where everyone was and to her surprise everyone was sitting in the lounge staring at each other with teary red eyes. Adele went and sat next to her grandmother rubbing her shoulder.
“Good morning everyone,” she said with her soft voice.
“Good morning Adele,” everyone greeted her back, but no one looked at her, not even once, because everyone was too busy holding their tears back.
“Oh Lord please tell me I’m dreaming, please wake me from this nightmare,” she whispered to herself not wanting her grandmother to hear.
Suddenly the doorbell rang. Her older brother Adam went and opened the door. All they could hear was Adam saying, “They are in the lounge, you can come through.”
Her stomach started to feel as if it was making a knot, her hand started to sweat and her throat closed up and she was struggling to breathe. Her grandmother started to cry and that’s when all of them started to cry.
“We are sorry for your loss, but it’s time for the funeral,” a familiar voice said.
When Adele looked up it was the pastor of our church wanting to start with the funeral. They got up slowly. They tried to pull themselves together for grandma’s sake and because they thought that grandpa would have wanted them to celebrate his life and mourn him later. Yes, reality is, today they were laying grandpa to rest.
After the service everyone went to their rooms. It was too painful, nobody knew what to say to each other. It’s the first time ever that they as a family had nothing to say to each other. Adele just laid there on her bed thinking of the memories together, the one’s she had with grandpa.
Adele got such a big fright when her cellphone rang. She bent over to see who was calling, it was Isabella her best friend.
“Hi chomee!” she shouts with her manly voice.
I smiled through the tears, “Hello friend,” Adele said.
“I just called to check up on you,” she said.
“I am so grateful for a friend like you. Thank you for supporting me today and for always being there for me, but I am not in the right mind space right now. Can I call you back later? I love you okay.” She couldn’t hold my tears back and just burst out and started to cry.
“I love you too friend, I understand you going through some stuff so I’ll call you back later.”
She hung up and Adele ended up crying myself to sleep.
She woke up at around 5pm the afternoon. She took her pyjamas out, ran herself a bath and went downstairs to get something to eat afterwards.
“Hello everyone.”
Her mom was busy setting the table and her brother and grandmother were watching television.
“Where is Nisha?” she asked Adam, but he just ignored her so she just went to my grandmother, gave her a kiss on her forehead and went to help her mother in the kitchen.
After the food was done they went to sit and had their meal.
For the first time after grandfather passed away they ate together like a family, talked and laughed.
“We are still left and we have to go on with life,” her mother said.
“We are bruised, but not broken and your father would have wanted us to move on,” grandmother said.
They had a feast to celebrate her grandfather’s life and tjey realised that all things come to an end, and so did grandpa’s life.
***
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