Fairview was a quiet suburb on the outskirts of Bellevue Heights. A well-kept, white-fenced suburb full of laughing children, bored housewives and business men, Fairview was the place that city folk dreamt of living in and Brian and Angela dreamt of moving out of.
It had changed so much since the day they had first moved in and it did not appeal to their slightly hippyish side…
Angela had met Brian when she was a camp counselor and he was the art counselor at Sunnydown Camp, a summer camp run for children with special needs.
Angela loved camp life and she lived for the summers when she could spend her time swimming, fishing and singing campfire songs with the kids she looked after.
A pretty young woman, Angela attracted Brian’s attention as soon as he walked into the camp staff area. A small guy for his age, Brian was handsome in an unconventional way and Angela felt herself drawn to his personality and kindness. The two enjoyed a summer romance amongst the splendour of the forest setting and when the holidays were over Angela decided she couldn’t live without this amazing man in her life.
After a quick wedding, which surprised but delighted both Angela and Brian’s families, the two settled into a home bought for them by Brian’s grandma in a new area outside of the city. A new community was being established in Fairview and it seemed a wonderful place for a young couple to settle and raise a family in.
Brian started work at the local school as the Art teacher and Angela, bare-foot and pregnant enjoyed her time as a special needs assistant at a nearby unit.
Sasha was born in the springtime and it seemed to Angela that she was the happiest woman in the world! A calm and placid baby, Sasha was a joy to both his parents and a lot of time was spent on musical and artistic pursuits as he grew up.
Naturally gifted with musical instruments, Sasha enjoyed playing the flute in particular and the family sang songs and made up music in the evenings rather than watch TV.
Sasha was popular at school. He was the class clown but that didn’t mean that he had to be funny just to get the other kids to like him. He seemed to have a way about him that other people liked and he had more friends than any other kid at the school.
For his part, Sasha was just plain interested in other people. He couldn’t understand those who were focused purely on themselves and didn’t make an effort to get to know people. Sasha was genuinely interested in what made other people ‘tick’ and he spent a great deal of his time talking to homeless people, elderly people and those who were ‘outcasts’. He wanted to know about their lives, what they wanted from life, what they had lost in life and what made them the people they had turned into.
Sasha didn’t know exactly why he was so interested in other people. Perhaps it was because his parents had never babied him and had always had proper conversations with him that it seemed natural to him to speak normally to other people.
Maybe it was because he was an only child and he wanted to fill up the time he had on his hands with talking to others? It is more likely the fact that Sasha was a genuine and sincere charitable person with huge empathy and a lot of love to give to others.
Sasha enjoyed a wonderful relationship with both his parents and he never felt that he had missed out by not having a brother or sister.
Angela had wanted another child but when she did not fall pregnant she and Brian decided that was God’s way and that they had everything they could hope for in Sasha.
Always a help at home, Sasha loved to help his Mum cook the dinner. She always said to him that he was destined for great things and that with his empathy and love of people that he should look towards going into either medicine or the theatre!
When the Virus took his parents away from him, Sasha was devastated and became very insular. He had lost everything, literally. He went through a period of deep depression and he questioned everything that he had understood to be the way he lived his life and the way that his mind worked. He questioned God and faith, love and hate and all the deep dark feelings that most of us choose to ignore until we are faced with them through loss and grief.
Sasha wandered the streets and slept in the gutter. He had his Mother’s jewellery stolen from him one day and he didn’t have the strength - physically or emotionally - to fight back. Life seemed to be over for this guy in more ways than one - he had given up and there didn’t seem to be a way out of the blackness that spiraled around him.
And then one night Sasha lay on his back in a field and looked up at the stars. He had come out of the city to get some space and some peace from the gangs that were bringing terror and havoc to the city.
As he gazed at the night sky, Sasha had a vision. He had never been particularly religious and had certainly not been the spiritual type. But what he saw that night put everything in its place and he woke in the morning feeling the greatest peace and calm that he had ever felt. Somehow he knew that everything was going to be okay and he walked away from the city and further into the countryside, taking with him only the flute that he had grabbed from his home the day he had left…