THE KIND HEARTS OF CHILDREN AND THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASON
by Michelle Ann King
Elizabeth belonged to Trina's grandfather. She was eighty-two years old, although Trina would never have guessed it to look at her; she looked old-fashioned, but not old. Trina played with Elizabeth every Christmas when they visited Grampa, although she was careful to keep it a secret. Elizabeth said he wouldn't like it if he knew they were friends, which Trina thought was mean. Elizabeth said she was right, and that Grampa was a very mean man indeed.
Trina decided Elizabeth was her very favourite friend. Nobody else she knew had such interesting stories to tell.
But then Grampa died, and instead of Christmas dinner the next year they had something called a wake. There were lots of people dressed in black, who sipped wine and told stories about Grampa. But none of these people was Elizabeth, and their stories were dull; all they talked about were the nice things Grampa did. Trina wasn't interested in that.
She searched all over, but Elizabeth was gone. So was Grampa, which was also upsetting — Trina had hoped he would tell her all about having an aneurysm (her new very favourite word) the way Elizabeth had told her about being strangled. How long did an aneurysm take? Did it hurt? She'd been looking forward to finding out.
Without Grampa, she had to learn about aneurysms from a book, and it wasn't half as much fun. But at least she discovered why he never came back: his own brain had killed him, so there was no one for him to belong to. It was disappointing, but interesting too. Trina liked to know how things worked.
