Free The Thanksgiving Treasure by Gail Rock

laughed a little, “I sure don’t feel like it right now, but someday I will. We all will.”
    â€œNo, you won’t!” I said angrily. “You’ve got to wait till I grow up! You’ll live to be a hundred years old! I’ll be a painter in Paris, France, and you’ll come and live with me.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do with a hundred-year-old woman draggin’ around after you?” Grandma asked.
    â€œYou could wear a beret,” I said, picturing it all in my mind, “and we’d go to the top of the Eiffel Tower and drink wine.”
    â€œNow, don’t talk nonsense,” Grandma said, gently. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to live to be a hundred.”
    â€œI don’t want you to die!”
    â€œWe never want to lose the people we love,” Grandma said quietly. “But we have to remember the good things about them, and keep those memories, and that’s what you have to do with Mr. Rehnquist, just the way you remember the things I told you about your mother.”
    â€œBut I never knew my mother,” I said. “I’ve never known anybody who died before.”
    â€œI know, Addie, I know.”
    â€œI’m scared, Grandma. I just don’t see why anyone has to die.”
    She came over to me and put her arms around me.
    â€œAddie, I felt just that way when your Grandpa died. I thought I couldn’t face another day knowing I wouldn’t see him. And then one day, someone read something to me. It said, ‘When people leave on a boat, you say, “There they go.” But on the other side of the horizon, they’re saying, “Here they come.” ’ I thought … it must be something like that, and I was able to let Grandpa go.”
    I thought about what she said for a moment, and it seemed to make sense to me. I imagined Mr. Rehnquist meeting his old friend Pearlie Blake again, and what had happened didn’t seem quite so terrible.
    â€œDo you think I should go to Mr. Rehnquist’s funeral?” I asked.
    â€œI think that would be a very nice thing to do,” said Grandma.
    â€œI won’t know what to do.”
    â€œWhy, you don’t have to do anything,” she said. “Tell you what, I’ll go with you.”
    â€œOh, would you, Grandma? What if Dad finds out about it?”
    â€œNever you mind,” she said, hugging me close. “I’ll take care of that.”
    â€œI can’t believe I’ll never see Mr. Rehnquist again.”
    â€œYou made him happy,” she said. “Like you’ve made me happy. Remember that, always remember that.”
    I cried then, and Grandma held me close.

Chapter Eleven
    Mr. rehnquist’s funeral was that Saturday, and while Dad was busy doing some work on his pickup, Grandma and I quietly got dressed and left for the funeral parlor without telling him. I had on my best church dress, which was yellow with brown and white rickrack trim, my black patent leather Mary Janes with heavy white socks, and my hat, a navy blue sailor with a long ribbon down the back. Grandma wore her black dress she always wore to funerals, and her flat black hat with the pink rose on the side. I tied a brown ribbon on the fall bouquet I had made those weeks ago for Grandma and took it along for Mr. Rehnquist.
    We set off down the street to Jensen’s Funeral Home, and when we got there, we saw the hearse drawn up outside waiting. When we got inside, Mr. Jensen was there at the door to give us a Memorial Programme, and to help us sign the register. I wrote in my best penmanship, and noticed that there were no other names above ours. We were the first ones there, and Mr. Jensen’s assistant ushered us in. Grandma and I sat in the fourth row of the little chapel. We never liked to sit right in the front row at church either, but we always sat close enough so Grandma could hear well.
    This was the first funeral I had ever been to. I looked