‘Fiction In A Flash Challenge’ Week #18 Entry Part 5) by Roberta Eaton Cheadle @RobertaEaton17 #IARTG #ASMSG #WritingCommunity

Hello everyone and a warm welcome to PART 5)  of the entries for my weekly: “Fiction in A Flash Challenge” Week #18. Today I’m featuring a contribution from Roberta Eaton Cheadle
Last week I set the following Challenge:

Hello everyone and welcome to my new “Fiction in A Flash Challenge!” Each week I’ll be featuring an image and inviting you to write a Flash Fiction or Non-Fiction piece inspired by that image in any format and genre of your choosing.  Maximum word count: 750 words.

Here is the image prompt and Roberta’s Contribution.

The vintage music books lay in a neat pile on top of her old vinyl records. Reaching out, he picked one up and looked at it. The paper was slightly yellow from age.

I can’t believe she’s still got these books, he thinks. I remember how pleased she was when she found them in an antique shop in Greymont. I’d just passed my Grade 4 practical music exam and she was hopeful I would learn to play some of the songs.

He’d started music lessons at four years old and had learned to read music fluently before he could read. He remember his mother telling him that he had initially struggled to learn the alphabet and to read because it was like learning a second language for him.

She had done everything she could to encourage him with his music. Listening to him practice every morning before she went to work and taking him to lessons in the afternoons when she got home were built into her long list of daily activities. He’d been having three hour-long lessons a week before elected to give up music; one for singing, one for theory, and one for practical piano.

When he’d reached high school and decided to stop playing the piano, his mother had hidden her disappointment and allowed him to do so without an argument. She’d accepted that music was something that no longer interested her tall, academic son. He was not a creative and she couldn’t live her life through him. She let it go and he’d pursued maths, science and IT.

He’d been grateful for her understanding, especially as he knew she would have loved an opportunity to learn to play when she was a girl. One day she’d told him that a next-door-neighbour had started teaching her when she was nine years old. Her family had moved a few months later and she’d never had another chance to learn.

He turned the page of the top book and it opened to ‘My Favourite Things’ from ‘The Sound of Music’.

Mother’s favourite song. She always said she wanted me to play it at her funeral one day. Of course, she didn’t expect to die of a stroke just before her fiftieth birthday. Didn’t know that her blood pressure was a ticking time bomb due to years of work-induced chronic stress.

A tear slipped down his cheek and plopped onto the page.

I can’t play it at her funeral myself but I can see that it is played. This song and Morning has Broken will definitely be included in the order of service at her memorial.

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