Bittersweet Symphony: Simply Ashton (On Hold)

Chapter 1

Well, let's start from the day I lost the most important woman in my life, then.

Yep, my mum.

I was thirteen back then, when she hugged me for one last time, before she closed her beautiful eyes forever.

She was the angel of my life. Back then, the only one who used to get me.

She used to observe me as I tried to make music out of practically everything I found, spoons, cutlery, water...everything.

She had gifted me a guitar just a year before she passed away.

It was the only six string I ever owned, though at that raw age I had dreamed of becoming a rock star. I didn't really understand what it meant at that time, since I was living in Franschoek. It was practically a village, a very small one. 

I just had a vague idea about guitar being related to that term and I would jump around everywhere in my too-huge-for-a-country-house mansion and in the local high school.

And in the football field. 

Everywhere except when my father was around.

The guy could never cut me some slack. Jeez, he was always after my life so that I just lock myself up in my room and open those text books (Wow, so interesting) and mug up all the shit, so that I could join the (Oh so great) Dawson family business, which, apparently, my smart ass daddy snatched from his siblings and cousins, giving way to his greed.

He was a greedy old man, and so I never did give a freaking shit about what he thought.

I tolerated him because my mother told me so.

No, don't get me wrong, I didn't hate him. I mean, c'mon the man was out most of the time and provided me with food and all that.

I just blissfully ignored him.

And what's amazing: He returned the favour. Well, most of the time.

"How was the result this time, Ashton?"

And I would stand behind my angelic mother while he went through the four-paged perfect looking disaster, scanning every corner of it with his small, grey eyes.

Hey, now you know where I got mine from. Except their size is way better, thanks to my mum's genes.

"How can you manage to pass every time?" he would ask, "Either don't make it, or be perfect. You are a cliff-hanger in yourself, you know, Ashton?"

He would throw the report anywhere in the room and then advance near a firm lady with a shivering child hiding behind-us.

My mom would shift away, much to my disgust and he would say this, "You have to handle this Empire, do you get this? Stop making weird noises and get on with your books."

And then he would climb up the huge, grand staircase that used to lead to his bedroom.

He would walk as if he was a lion walking back to the cave after doing a satisfactory kill.

Not a good one, a satisfactory one.

I would sigh and my mom would ruffle my hair on her way to the kitchen and I would follow her.

On this day, every year since my first report card (Yes, I'm that consistent. Have been as bad since the first instance.) my mother would make me my favourite dessert, fruit custard with home made chocolate syrup as it's topping. She would do it herself, even after we kept a cook.

My blissfulness came to an end soon, and my father and I could just not stand each other in the same house, no matter how huge it was. The calming effect departed and two Alphas were left alone and estranged in the same home, it was just impossible. 

My father got that and sent me to a boarding school in Chicago and it was not the same after that.

I just had my black guitar as a memory of my most loved and most cherished, to get by.

As a child, it was plenty disgusting to go to a school where the children had loving and caring, most importantly, alive, parents.

There would be so many questions.

"Where are you from? What do your parents do?"

"Is your dad very rich?"

"Your mom cooks?"

Aaah, these kids! These frustrating creatures would irritate me to the core, though they were my age. I didn't like to share the story of my mother with them, I didn't think they would, like, ever, get me.

I would just keep playing guitar, scoring goals (and later girls too) and spend all my days alone, playing that one tune over and over again, almost religiously.

Alter Bridge's In Loving Memory.

My roommate, Greg, the only one I was in talking terms with there, was a sucker for Alter Bridge and Myles Kennedy.

The guy used to blast them all night long, in his tape recorder, which was the 'in thing' then.

In Loving Memory had soothed me then, and continued to, all my life.

Sometimes I wonder, what would it be like, had my mom been alive?

Would I be stuck in Africa? Would I be the new heir to the company my father had worked so hard to snatch from his family members?

Most importantly, had she been alive, would she be proud of me?

I don't know, I didn't know.

Right now, sitting here in Franschoek, in that huge mansion which is now open to public, I have no idea how it would have been, had my life taken a simpler, less painful road.

Holding that black shining six string of mine, I felt complete.

Not fully, of course. It just comforted me.

The moment I would pluck those golden strings, lightly once, harshly twice, the second one first, the third one last, a peaceful silence would fill up my heart.

No matter how deep in shit I would be, this would always comfort me and the sound, oh, that's what the human ears live for.

Some simple souls are unaware of the fact, but without the beautiful sound of music we are all incomplete, entangled in the mess of all the chaos in the world.

Music is our escape.

And there, in that moment, I felt my mother smile down at me, looking more divine that all the angels of the heaven.