Comfort

I often seek comfort at the small chapel on the grounds. It is peaceful there, quiet, and I can hear myself think. I know the servants (those who remain) think I come here to pray… but I come only to listen to my thoughts, to sort through them, one by one so I might make sense of it all. We held the services for my brothers here when they were lost at sea last year, and then again for Mother and Father less than a month ago. I expect even the meager services expended the last of the family “fortune,” which have never recovered from our numerous setbacks. Father proved to be in debt to many companies, and had risked a great deal in his enterprises… and now I am left to bear that burden. I wished I could have traded places with him and my brothers – not in death, but upon the seas, to be far from this place. Now I simply feel older than my years should allow. It is not grief, it is simply that I lack the compass for where I should go, what I should do – and what I can do. There are not enough years in one's life to do all that I wish to do – or had wished to do, and what status our family had is lost, squandered on fool's errands. Yet in this simple church, I feel at peace, and take comfort in it. Isabella