A Letter to a Friend

-

My dearest Life Long Friend



In a few days you will be heading back home for good, I have such mixed feelings about it! Silly really after all it’s not my life. I am juggling happiness, sadness, apprehension and anticipation all at the same time. We have never been "in your pocket" friends but I'm going to miss you. The SKYPEs and random thirty minutes phone calls for no reason what so ever, just having someone close that knows exactly how we feel as we make our way through the process of settling. 

In some ways I disagree with your decision to return home, but I also know that you never really left, not emotionally anyway. You have been out of your comfort zone, felt alien and unsupported and were never able to settle. Immigration has to be the hardest thing for anyone to do, I know what you have been through and I am sorry I could not provide the extra support you needed.

Africa it seems was willing to release only one of us, she still has your soul, it is a call you must answer.

So while I am sad to see you go it makes me happy to hear the excitement in your voice when you call me to discuss things. While it saddens me that it will be a very long time before we see one another I am so happy for your sisters. They have missed you, I am sure, as much as you have missed them.  Though I am apprehensive about things going as smoothly as you hope I shall be waiting with anticipation to hear about all your new adventures.

Thank you for all the years of friendship, but especially these past seven years. Thank you for agreeing to be my "moving buddy." For those insane organisational skills that helped to make our move seamless and relatively painless. For putting up with us for our first four weeks and helping us "find our feet." Thank you for being my confidant and keeping my secrets, for your reliability and your loyalty. Thank you for your trust and your willingness to help. Thank you for the insults and complete lack of sympathy. Thank you for making me laugh till I cried, for cowboy hats, copper baths, UFUs, Bacardi and tabs, Hooch and many other alcoholic beverages.

I wish you happiness old friend, oodles and oodles of happiness, the kind of happiness that gets under your skin and into your soul. I wish you love, unabashed, unconditional, unending love, the kind of love that surrounds you and consumes you. I wish you light because no matter the choices you make or roads you take there will be dark days ahead.

Remember to chill out and relinquish some of that need to control everything and just let things happen sometimes. Remember to take some time for yourself. Remember that sometimes a little empathy is called for.

I will always remember you when I take out "those rosary bead things" and "talk to that catholic God!" and when I do it will always make me smile.

Thank you my Life Long Friend for the memories! Farewell and safe journey home. I Hope Mama Africa beats her thunder drums to welcome you back to her.



Love you forever and for always

Mantha

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"In Tributum Ut"

-
A man died today, he was not famous, influential or rich, he did not win any “Nobel” prizes or leave his mark in the history books, but he sure made an impact on the lives of those who knew him. He was a father, a grandfather, a husband, an ex husband, a son, a brother, a cousin and an old family friend. He laughed with enthusiasm, reminisced with a smile and told the nastiest jokes he could think of. He was the inspiration behind the old adages: “He drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney!” I am sure he has nursed thousands of hangovers. He was unashamedly racist and didn’t care that what he said was offensive to some, me included. In fact, I believe he said some things precisely because they were offensive. He was most certainly not a religious man, though he was by no means “Godless,” he was a hooligan, not a heathen. He enjoyed the company of not just his generation but also that of a younger generation, a generation that enjoyed his company immensely. I am sure there are man
Read more

Hey Dad

-
Last night as the final rays of daylight left World’s End and settled brightly over the heart of the world, you breathed your last and slipped into eternity. Four children felt a pillar of their lives crumple and a wife feels hollow. I wish I could wail and scream at the sky, purge these surging, consuming emotions that are beating against my heart with just one blood curdling soul wrenching scream and be done with it all. I want to be angry and sad and miserable, but I can’t be it doesn’t work like that, nothing is ever quite so simple. Through this haze of tears and with this heavy heart I feel only gratitude. I do not believe you deserved the suffering you endured, yet I am so grateful that to the end you were alert and dignified. I wish we all had more time, just one more phone call or SKYPE. But I am so grateful that the end came quickly.   I am grateful for the bond we share, one that neither distance nor death could sever. My children won’t get the chance to learn from you
Read more

The Little Catastrophe

-
As one daughter leaves her baby years behind the other hurtles through the terrible twos with the speed and force of a tropical cyclone. What a handful of nonsense our beautiful calm little Lollipop has become In company she retreats into herself and climbs onto my lap to bury her head in my neck in the hopes of not been seen by strangers. Or, with some coaxing, she will sit with her sister in her bedroom and play. But alone with her family she is almost unstoppable. The neighbour’s cat has begrudgingly given up his sunning spot on our trampoline because the Lollipop has trapped him in there a few too many times. In her delight and eagerness to touch the cat, I think she has almost dislocated his tail or maybe dug an eye out. Fortunately for her he is a placid old boy who never retaliates, just tried to run away. She had figured out that to get into her sister's room where all the fun stuff, like felt tip pens and paints are, she just has to pull down the door handle. To
Read more