A Sister's Heart

Chapter 10

They arrived home at five and found Alexis in the kitchen. "I hope you don't mind. I thought you guys could do with a night off." She said, and the break was a welcome one. "It's just a pasta, but it's the one thing I can cook without burning anything." Her Aunts laugh, but her Mom flashed a knowing smirk.

Two hours later and they had all devoured their Carbonara and it was time for the conversation that the Hart sisters had decided the day before that they would have with their kids. Ivy brought up the topic, their Grandmother's funeral, and Veronica went through their ideas. Diana had the pleasure of explaining exactly what they wanted the kids to do, which was to think of anything they would like to add to the service and voice their opinion on their parent's thoughts. The room fell silent as everyone considered things until the silence became kind of awkward. "So?" Diana nudged.

"I already told my Mom I wanted to sing something. But other than that, I love the video montage idea and I think we should all pick out some photos for that." Lauren's suggestion was met with agreeable nods and when her Mother backed the idea, Diana had a thought of her own.

"I think that would be really nice Lauren." She stated. "Why don't we do it now? We might get hit with inspiration while we look through pictures." Before anyone had even uttered a single word in response, Diana was on her feet and within moments she had emerged from her father's old office with a large cardboard box in tow. Everyone knew what it was as they had all contributed to the collection over the years.

Matthew didn't even wait for his Aunt to put the box down as he dove off of the couch and grabbed a hold of the box, wanting to be the first to pick an envelope. The rest of the family reached into the box too and each retrieved an envelope of their own, all varying in size and colours.

Diana found herself with a collection of photographs of one Christmas when Alexis was little. The one on top was of her daughter sat next to Esther, opening a present. Another was of both of her parents posing in Santa hats in front of the Christmas Tree wearing, and there was one of herself and her father laughing at something off camera. The last image in the stack was of just her Mom, settled into her favourite chair reading a book. She still wore the cheap paper hat from the Christmas cracker she had pulled with her granddaughter. It was one of Diana's favourite pictures of her mother; a candid shot that she herself had taken and she knew that she wanted it in the Order of Service; the video collage too if she could get it in. "If we put all of the ones we like into the middle, then we can go through them again and pick which ones get used where."

That's exactly what they did; for the next ninety minutes, after which the living room was covered in photos of Esther Hart. There were images scattered of her throughout her childhood, with her husband, her children, grandchildren. Her whole life was spread out across the floor and Diana realised that whittling down the number of photos to what was needed would be a far greater task than any of them had anticipated, so she took the initiative to stop searching and start organising.

"What are you doing?" Her daughter asked.

"So, four piles. One here," She indicated to her left. "for childhood photos and solo pics of Mom before she met dad. Another on here," she stated, moving her finger a little to the right. "will be pictures of Mom and Dad. "And the last two," her hand swept to her right. "will be one of Mom with family and one of her with friends."

Within a half and hour, the piles had been constructed. "Impressive Mom" Lexie observed.

"Yeah, Di. Using your organisational powers for good." Ronnie thought she was funny, hinting at her sisters history of OCD behaviour.

"Ha Ha, very funny!" Diana however, as much s she did not in fact find it at all funny, decided it best to leave it there and turned her attention back to the photographs before her. "Which ones do we put in the Order of Service, and which go into the video montage?" Diana already had hers, but so did her sisters. After a brief debate they chose the one that the kids had picked to use on the front of the programme, and her sisters and her own choices were to be used on the inside. Then they each chose twenty photos for the video which amounted to sixty photos in total.

"That's two tasks down, right?" The youngest sister asked, and the rest of the family agreed. "Alexis can you do the video montage?"

"Sure" She smiled. "Happy to."

"Great and Lauren will be singing. Just make sure to tell us what song so we can put it in the programme." Ronnie turned to her nephew. "Matty, anything you wanna do?" He didn't answer, just shook his head.

"Okay then. I suggested the other day that we all do a reading." Diana's statement was met with irritated sighs from both her sisters, who had never really liked the suggestion. "But I'm kind of thinking id should be just one reading now read by all three of us in instead of three separate ones." They liked this idea more and agreed to it as a compromise.

There were still some things that needed to be discussed further; those of a more sensitive nature for example, but for now they had made considerable progress and Diana was happy with how the evening had gone. Instead of it being just one person making all of the decisions, everyone had had a say and had felt included. It also meant that the pressure had been lifted from each of them a little bit, allowing them to communicate and get things done.

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Author's Note - I hope you like this new chapter. Please leave a comment or give it a like x