An old woman in twilight, little more than a shadow herself, she walked along the familiar old path she had worn from the back of her little house to the family graveyard. She had come in thunderstorms, blizzards and sometimes sick almost to the point of death. But she had always come. Every day just as she had promised all those years ago. She had never come this late in the day, though. She had never needed to.
    Passing through the opening in the wrought iron fence, she walked by the stones of her mother and father with little more than a glance. They were still in her heart but they weren't why she had come here at this late hour. There were several other older gravestones but these had never been anything more than names to her, as cold and unfamiliar as the marble they were engraved upon. She went to the far corner of the little cemetery and stood in front of three small gravestones, all with the same year engraved on their mossy surfaces: 1919. She read the names on the stones as she had every time she had come here despite their having been burned into her memory:

    "My little angel?  Red hair, I think? Perhaps."

    "Yes, Jimmy! Always laughing and joking? No. I'm not sure."

    "My twin sister? Yes, I know she was but her memory escapes me.
    "So many little ones dying so young. It was no plague, although it may has well have been. It was just that the influenza was bad that year and life was hard back then. Just life, really. I thought the sickness would take me too and we'd be together again but it didn't. I died a little with each of you, and now I can't even remember your pretty faces, I can't remember anything but these awful stones! Today I've come to follow you. I thought you'd be waiting! But it's been so long. I've forgotten you and you've forgotten me. And I'm still alone."
    The gray of twilight had faded to black and the old woman's shadow was lost in an endless night of solitude.

    The little girl awakened with a start. It was twilight, almost night. She must have cried herself to sleep amidst the fresh graves of her siblings. But that terrible dream didn't leave her when she opened her eyes. She saw her life stretching onward into long lonely years. She closed her eyes as tightly as she could, so tightly tears could scarcely escape.
    "I won't forget you, Amanda. Or you, Jimmy. Or you Edna. Not ever! I promise, I promise, I promise! But I won't come here again, not until I die. I'll remember you as you were when you were alive and I'll forget these cold stones with your names on them. And then someday we'll be together again. Always."
    She walked away from the little cemetery and cried, but never looked back. And she remembered.