Andy, my friend.

I was so saddened by Whitney’s death and I did not get a chance to watch the funeral.  So I watched half of it on Carnival Monday.  It was quite nice actually and I started thinking about my singing and the fact that I had not given my vocal coach a copy of my new cd.  So I made a plan in my head to call him sometime this week and get a cd to him.  I figured too that I would record all the songs that I had perfected with him as a tribute for all those years of work and rehearsing.  After all nothing should be wasted, not even time.

 However, on Tuesday morning my husband calls and tells me that Andy, my vocal coach, died this morning.  So I am so sad again, I can’t even watch the end of Whitney’s funeral because it seems that all the aspects of my singing, Whitney my inspiration and Andy my coach and fan, had died.  And I keep crying every time I think that I had not given him a cd.  I know why, but that is for another time.  But he would have been happy for me and I think he did so much for me that it was the least I could do. 

So his funeral was yesterday and I did not go.  Why?  I have a really foolish reason. Andy and I were never FB friends and I never found him on FB.  But on Thursday evening, I searched his name and found that not only was he on FB but he had 592 friends.  So that really hurt my feelings.  Maybe, I was not that much of a friend to him.  ( I know this is very silly, I KNOW. It gets even sillier) I decided therefore, that I would just be one in a huge crowd at his funeral and so I would not go. But I did send him a friend request though.  My sister shook her head when I told her; she jokingly remarked that he should accept the friend request.  When I checked my FB page yesterday evening, guess what, he accepted it, well someone accepted it on his behalf.  And so he became my 500^th friend.  While reading his page though, I started to cry again because I realized that, I was not ready to go to his funeral.  I was not ready to see him dead in a coffin; I just was not ready for him to die.  I read up a little about dealing with death and I understand that I am in the guilt phase and that you often feel confused.  That would explain my facebook rationale which seemed very stupid to me but I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to go. 

But you know what you meant to me  Andy and you will always have that place in my heart as someone who believed in me and my potential. You would always have that place as a friend who listened to me when I my heart was too heavy to sing and as a true coach who made me dig so deep in my soul that I cried when I sang.  I thank you for that. 

I thank you for stopping me from singing for free everywhere and for teaching me about where I should and should not perform, (read bittersweet bar, lol).  I thank you for teaching me to value my voice and charge a fee to perform.  I thank you for helping me understand the politics of competition in Trinidad so that when I placed so low on Scouting for Talent, the pain was not so bad.  I thank you for “boffing me” to a level of excellence that surprised even me. I thank you for singing at my wedding even though you sang what you wanted and refused to tell me in advance. I thank you for teaching me to respect time and to be scared to reach late to our rehearsals.  I thank you for being my friend in life and in death.

This is how I will remember you.  I thank you for just being you.