She told me to open my presents whenever I wanted to but I only opened one because it didn't feel right, it didn't feel like Christmas at all. I decided to wait for Gamma to come home and we could all open them together.

All day long people came and went and some of them brought food or gifts and others just came and ate the food. It was the quietest and worst party I had ever seen.

The day after Christmas Gamma still hadn't come home and I was really beginning to worry. I asked mother where Gamma had gone and when would she be coming home I think it might have been her tall pointy shoes pinching her feet but she only looked at me as if she were in pain, but she never did answer my question so I didn't her again. I gently kissed her and brought her slippers downstairs.

So then I waited by the window and under the Christmas tree and in her room for Gamma to come home so that we could open presents and make Christmas cookies like she promised. Then it came the time to go to church.

I didn't like church very much because they make you sit very still and you have to listen to someone talk for a very long time, and you have to try to not fall asleep and I didn't want to go so much that I cried all the way to the church. Everyone said it would be alright, again and again.

When we got there we sat all the way in the front row, it was my first time to sit in the front and it made me nervous but excited. We sat right in front of a long box covered with a million flowers.

People came over to my mother and whispered softly to her about things I didn't understand so I sat and tore the tissue that mom gave me into lots of little pieces and they fluttered into a pile onto the floor.

Then I realized that when people got up on the little stage in front of us they would talk about my Gamma and how tell each other how wonderful she is. This was all very confusing to me and I was anxious to have it all end. I kept looking at the doors in the back to see if Gamma was coming yet, but she didn't.

When everyone had finished talking the big doors to the church opened and everyone suddenly stood up. A man wearing a very blue tie moved the flowers onto the floor and opened the big box. Then my mother asked if I wanted to say anything.




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