A Grandmother's Legacy: 365 Notes To Live By by Buffy Andrews

Author:Buffy Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: free devotional, a year of inspiration, free devotional for teens, inspirational notes
Publisher: Prism Book Group

Please enjoy this sample from Ella’s Rain by Buffy Andrews, available from Prism Book Group!

Copyright 2015 © Buffy Andrews

CHAPTER ONE

Ella stared at the alabaster urn the funeral director had given her. It was hard to believe that Grandma had become nothing more than a pile of white ashes. She longed to feel her grandma’s thick arms around her and to smell her sweet perfume that hung in the air like an August fog. How does a cream puff of a lady become nothing more than a bag of dust, she wondered.

Cancer. That evil C word. The word she had lived with for almost a year. The evil thing that had devoured Grandma like a vulture devours a dead carcass, gorging itself until its crop bulges and leaves nothing but splintered bones behind.

It was so unfair, Ella thought. Grandma Dorothy was all she had. Now her beloved Dorothy was gone, off to an emerald city from which she would never return. And Ella was left with nothing but the sage alabaster urn Grandma had picked out before she died. Picked out like everything else.

The hymns that would be sung. The biblical passages that would be read. Even the flowers that would sit beside the urn on the pedestal table. She’d picked everything out as if she’d been planning a picnic, and Ella hated her for it.

Sometimes, Ella couldn’t stand Grandma’s optimism, and she’d escape to her room. She’d tell Grandma she had to study, but she never did. She’d lie on her bed, stare at the ceiling, and think, and remember, and pretend—pretend that Grandma was in the kitchen singing her favorite Doris Day song and making macaroni and cheese.

Ella could hear Grandma’s voice in her head. Whatever will be will be.

She started to cry. Screw whatever will be will be, she thought. What about what I want? Then she started to panic, afraid that Grandma’s voice would fade like her mother’s, and father’s, and sister’s. No matter how hard she tried, Ella no longer heard their voices.

They’d died when Ella was six. Killed in an accident on the way home from the zoo. Crash Kills Family of Three, the newspaper headline had said.

Ella could still remember that day, as if it was yesterday or the day before instead of eleven years ago. Ella had a stomach virus and was too sick to go. She’d spent the night throwing up and eventually fell asleep in her mother’s arms next to the white porcelain tub. Grandma had watched her while the rest of Ella’s family met her mom’s friend for their annual zoo outing.

Ella was so upset she couldn’t go that she cried the whole way through Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory—her favorite movie. Even watching Augustus Gloop fall into the chocolate river and being sucked out by the extraction pipe, and gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde blowing up like a balloon, didn’t make her laugh.

Grandma promised to take her to the zoo when she felt better, but Ella still cried. She wanted to see the monkeys with Sissy.

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