This is the final episode of old notes and memories. For those reading for this first time, you can check my profile for the previous episodes.. I hope you enjoy it.

The days that followed after she left were one of the most difficult, I couldn’t believe she was gone so I would always go to her house and sit in the usual spot we used to sit together in those evenings we weren’t fighting; in front of a barber shop opposite her house hoping she would just descend the spiral stairs like she used to and come sit with me. Time passed and I stopped going there, and I forgot about the note she gave me, and then life got busy. It’s been nine years.

Her name is Lola. She was that person I knew meant so much to me but never acknowledged, I never told her either, never will.I turned to the last page of the note and saw something else she had written in red ink, something that has nothing to do with economics or any other subject, something that pierce my soul like a thousand needles.

Remember me when I am gone away,
gone far away into a distant land.
When you can no more hold my hand nor I half turn to go yet turning back to stay.
Remember me when no more day by day I speak to you of the future;
one we both could have had.
It will be too late to wish, to counsel then or to pray.
Still you will remember that I waited.

Every of life’s situation is meant to teach us a lesson.

My life is filled with mistakes, some that aren’t even mine but I carry it upon me nevertheless. There are two kinds of mistake: The first is that mistake I wish I could go back in time and change, one that made my past regretful, the other is that mistake I am glad I made, because it taught me so many things. I believe it’s the same for every other person.

Life will always give you the same situations to deal with in diverse forms.It is one of the differences between life and formal school. You see, in the classroom you would be taught a lesson before given a test but life will give you a test that would teach you a lesson; sometimes the lessons of life could be bitter, sometimes sweet, sometimes a mix of both and the interesting thing is that providence have a way of repeating the same test if you fail ituntil you learn the right lesson. No matter the standpoint of argument, the past is a learning ground where you can always go to when life gives you a test. Maybe that’s why my mother has refused to do away with that table, she wouldn’t throw away the past, she could be presented with another situation which she could need a lesson from her past. Life has presented me with a situation that requires a lesson from the past, could that be the reason I decide to come home?

I didn't return to school the next day. In the evening, I went to the house where she used to live, her sister had moved out years ago. Aside that nothing has changed; the street is still the same, the shops opposite the compound are still occupied by the same owner, including the barber. I thought that place was frozen in time like a picture or maybe it’s trapped in the past. I sat in front of the barber shop; exactly opposite the house and watched the spiral staircase like I used to do while I waited for her. The sight of her descending those stairs was like Venus descending from the cloud. A girl was descending the stairs; i stood up quickly thinking it was an apparition of Lola. The girl that was descending the stairs has Lola’s slender figure, her descent down the stairs is quick and not majestic like Lola’s, and her hair was short in the trending Anita Baker style unlike Lola’s Alicia Keys’ braids. Our gaze met and held for few seconds when she got to the foot of the stairs.” I have to tell Ekene before it is too late”.I sat there for another ten minutes or thereabout after the girl went away before i stood up to leave.
In the barber’s shop a song has just finished playing, I hadn’t been listening all the while but I caught the last part. It sounded familiar; “tell that someone that you love, just what you’re thinking of. If tomorrow never comes.”

So now I sit here alone,
Blinded with tears and grief and all that,
For nought is left looking at
since my delightful land is gone.
A violet bed is budding near,
Wherein a lark has made her nest,
And good they are but not the best
And dear they are but not so dear.

Thank you for reading.. Anticipate the sequel "I killed Ekene".