For Olivia Hargrove, her life felt like a ferris wheel. Sometimes she was up, and other times she was down but what she needed to learn was to enjoy the ride.
When her father dragged her to a small town, she thought the only thing she needed to sur...
No one should get used to funerals. It shouldn't be the norm, but for Olivia, it was starting to feel like it.
The first funeral she went to was her grandmothers when she was six.
She was confused as to what was going on. It was uncommon for all her relatives to be together in the same place.
She had asked Billy what was going on; he told her that grandma Beatrice had gone to a better place, a happy one.
She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion and looked up to her older brother. "When can we visit her?"
He held her hand, pulling her away from seeing the open casket of their grandmother. "In the future," he had responded.
The second funeral she went to was at age 10.
By then, she knew what it meant and that she couldn't visit her grandmother like she wanted to.
A year after her grandfather died. She already knew what black dress to wear.
She was happy that he would at least be with her grandmother Beatrice again.
Then it was Susan's funeral.
She was there for Max; she was the shoulder that she could cry on.
Max was quiet and reserved; she didn't want to see the tombstone; there was no body.
There was nothing to bury, they couldn't find any remains of Susan, but Olivia still wanted for Max to have a place to go and feel connected to her mother someway.
They stayed there for a little while. Max had picked up some yellow flowers on her own earlier in the day.
Susan's favorite color was yellow.
There were a lot of people at the cemetery that day with the events that had happened during the fourth of July.
Olivia didn't stop at Neil's tombstone though no one did.
And now, this year, she hoped it would be the last time she would be at the cemetery.
She looked down at the tombstone that had her older brother's name, her only brother.
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Steve stood next to her with an arm around her.
A few people from school had showed up; she knew they weren't really friends with Billy. He didn't have many friends; he wasn't much of a people person.
There were quite a few girls around her age and even older than her brother. She couldn't believe they were there.
A few colleagues of his were there as well, and they gave her condolences.
They left shortly after since they had a lot of work after the 'earthquake.'
She hated everyone that had shown up; they didn't know Billy, they truly didn't know him.
