Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
January 28th, 1991 — Portsmouth, NH 3:12 PM, EST
It had been a long winter.
As she sat in the first church pew, her hands folded and her pale face buried in her knuckles, Shelby wondered how long it had been since she had been in that room. Her grandmother had raised her Catholic, but Shelby had never had much faith in the Catholic Church. God, maybe. A god, anyways. She was never sure where she sat with faith or greater beings, but she found a familiar comfort in the building that day, as she had never quite felt more alone.
She'd gotten the call from her great aunt Eleanor, who lived in nearby New Castle.
Shelby's grandmother had passed away peacefully in her sleep.
Her mind had continued to worsen since Shelby's visit in August, though her passing was sudden, and the news had come sooner than both Shelby and the doctors had expected.
Though she was glad her grandmother had escaped the disease, Shelby was left with a devastating hole inside of her, one that she feared would never fill. She'd lost her mother mere days into life, but she had never lost someone with whom she shared so many memories before.
The wake and service had since ended, and the burial would have to wait until spring, when the ground was thawed. Aunt Eleanor and her children, Shelby's mother's cousins, had invited her to come with them to dinner in New Castle, but Shelby had never known them very well, so she felt uncomfortable going with them. She had some things to wrap up at her grandmother's house, anyways.
Instead of heading back to her gran's, though, Shelby lingered still at the church. She'd been dragged to the building by her grandmother for all sorts of reasons throughout the years. Shelby could practically smell her grandmother's rosewood perfume as she sat in the woman's favorite pew. The perfume was an expensive brand, but Shelby could hardly remember name. All she knew was that it was reserved for special occasions, and that list of occasions had included Sunday morning mass.
It had been a good service, Shelby supposed. The last funeral she had been to had been her own mother's, but she didn't remember a single bit of it. All the memories she had of her mother were in the forms of photographs. There were flowers, and lots of people had come. Shelby didn't know most of them, but her grandmother must have. Donna and Lisa had even come, though they had both needed to leave right after the funeral to get back to their respective careers and lives — Donna was still in New York, and Lisa in California. It would have been nice to catch up with her old friends, and the local citizens of Portsmouth that she had known her entire life, Shelby supposed, if it hadn't been at her grandmother's funeral.
As she sat in silent meditation, Shelby had neglected to notice that she was no longer alone in the church. A gentle hand was placed on her shoulder and she turned to see Robbo standing behind her. He'd flown in from Seattle to be with her, and the rest of his family had driven up for the funeral too.
