My brother texted that it was a bad week.
So I buried my grandfather almost alone.
The funeral was held in a small church that smelled faintly of old hymnals and furniture polish.
There were five of us if I counted the priest, Mrs.
Delaney, and the groundskeeper who stood at a respectful distance with his cap in his hands.
The casket was plain.
The music was soft.
When it was over, the silence felt bigger than the service had.
I stood by the grave after everyone else moved away and felt something I could not quite name.
It was grief, yes, but it was also anger.
Not loud anger.
Not dramatic anger.
The colder kind.
The kind that settles into your ribs and stays there.
After the burial, I went to his house and packed what was left.
Most of it was exactly what you would expect from a careful old man who had lived alone for too long: neatly folded shirts, a coffee can full of screws, stacks of utility bills, weathered books, a few VHS tapes with faded labels, and yellowing newspapers tied with string.
But in the top drawer of his bedroom dresser, wrapped in a handkerchief so soft it was almost threadbare, I found a silver ring.
It was heavier than it looked.
The outside was plain except for wear from years of use.
Inside the band was an etched symbol I did not recognize, a kind of broken compass shape with a line through it.
I remembered him wearing it when I was small.
Once, when I asked what it meant, he had smiled and tapped it with one finger.
“It reminds me who I promised to be,” he said.
I put the ring in my pocket.
