"Aunt Bailey!" Katie yelled, hurting my old ears.

"Quietly please Katie," I whispered. She nodded in my direction before she started to run to Bailey.

"Hi, Bean," Bailey greeted Katie.

Katie turned towards me, "Ice cream now?" She whined. I nodded with a sigh. Katie jumped up and down then ran out of the room.

"Slow-" I started to yell after her, but was interrupted with a fit of coughing. Bailey looked at me with worry etched in every line of her face. I shook my head, indicating I was fine.

"How are you May?" She asked tentatively.

"I am perfectly fine thank you very much, enough people worrying, don't need you too," I stated quickly. She smirked as she moved to the one chair in my little room.

"What did the doctor say today?"

"That I need to be here for the rest of my life," I sighed as I exaggerated to her. She shook her head at me.

"Stop it, you will get better," She told me.

"Sure," We sat in silence, her not knowing what to say to a dying woman. Katie ran into the room after a couple minutes with three cups of chocolate ice cream.

"I got the last three!" She exclaimed. I smiled at her when she handed me one. "Ok ok, tell me again,"

I grinned at Bailey, every time we got together Katie asked this. "Are you sure you wanna hear it?" Bailey asked, teasing.

Katie bobbed her head up and down. Bailey asked, "I don't know Katie, I'm tired," as she glanced at me. My grin grew as I played along.

"Yea Bailey is right, I need rest,"

Katie shook her head. "No no, it's our," her face scrunched up, "What's the word again?"

"Tradition," me and Bailey said in unison.

"Yes, that, pleaseeeeeeeee," Katie asked.

Bailey and I looked at each other, she nodded towards me. I took a deep breath and began our story.

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"Maybella Rumes, mother, friend, and wife. 1995-2019." I read the tombstone out loud to Katie. Her face was streaked with tears, while my eyes stayed bone dry. Katie ran off to be with her father. I thought of how shtoo younge was to have lost her mother.

I knew that May wouldn't live very much longer, but it killed me inside. She was my best friend and now she was gone. Closing my eyes, I thought back to when we met.

How she quite literally ran into me and we were both late for our first jobs. How May and I had lain under the stars on my birthday and she drunkenly said we were Ohana, family.

All those memories and more of how we had become best friends, even through her Progeria. I know that's what killed her in the end, how she was lucky to make it to 25, but I liked to believe that she chose to leave and it wasn't the sickness that did it.

Leaning down to her grave I lay a letter by the wilted roses. I thought of how I needed to bring fresh ones tomorrow.

"We are Ohana, family," I whispered.

Prose is a murderous bunch. This month saw some brilliant drabble entries, and I had a hard time choosing. In the end, I had to pick between a murder of crows and a spin on the afterlife, and the devil made me do it.

Winner:

https://www.theprose.com/post/756184/transport

Honorable mention: https://www.theprose.com/post/760890/the-funeral

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