A Fresh Start in Fairhaven by Sharon Downing Jarvis

Author:Sharon Downing Jarvis [Jarvis, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 1830-09-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

* * *

“ . . . every day some burden lifted”

All in all, it had been a very satisfying funeral, Bishop Shepherd reflected, as he pulled his truck into its accustomed spot behind the market on Saturday afternoon. President Walker had given a comforting talk on the spirit world and the resurrection, Roscoe’s younger brother had traveled from Tennessee to give the life sketch (which Hilda had helped to write), and the chapel had been full of people, Church members and others, who had known and loved Roscoe Bainbridge. Hilda seemed to have withstood it all very well, for which her bishop was abundantly grateful, and the Relief Society sisters had swept her along in a cloud of love and warmth and service, staying by her side as much as possible through the whole experience, somehow trying to do anything daughter Carolyn might have done, including preparing a delicious luncheon for relatives and out-of-town participants.

The only thing was, he admitted to himself, his upper lip was just going to have to stiffen up. It wouldn’t do to have a bishop breaking down in tears at such services, which he had nearly done at several points, such as when he had first escorted Hilda in to see her husband in his casket, then about an hour later when that casket had been closed for the last time. He’d had to clench his teeth when he had slipped into the chapel at the beginning of the service and asked the congregation to please rise, in honor of Roscoe and his family. Then there had been that one spot in the life sketch, when Roscoe’s brother had departed from his written text and said, “I don’t reckon Hildy ever even knew about this, but I remember when Ross was gettin’ ready to go off to war, and he went over to the liberry and cut him out a pitcher of Hildy from the school yearbook— figgered he needed it worse than that old liberry did, I reckon—and he kept it with him for the duration. Reckon it were a comfort to him. He shore loved his Hildy.”

The bishop had dared a glance at Hilda in that moment and saw her turn to her sister-in-law and mouth the words, “I knew.”

Whoa, Roscoe! he had thought. We thought we were being so secretive about that picture, and here she knew it all the time. He felt his throat choke off, and then, unaccountably, the urge to chuckle at the same time. And if she hadn’t known, she would now, with your tale-telling brother here! He had had to cough to cover the strange, explosive sound that resulted from this mix of feelings.

* * *

“Man, I’m drained,” he muttered to himself, heading into the store from the stockroom. “I never knew that funerals were more exhausting than a day’s work.” Having missed some of Thursday and Friday due to Roscoe’s death and the demands of the ward social, he felt obligated to show up for at least part of Saturday.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.