The prom dress arrived the day after Gwen’s funeral.

I remember standing on my porch with the box in my hands, staring at the shipping label through tears that wouldn’t stop. I had already buried my granddaughter the day before. I thought the worst of the pain had already passed.

But that box proved me wrong.

I carried it into the kitchen and placed it on the table like something fragile and sacred. For a long time, I couldn’t bring myself to open it. I just stood there, remembering.

Seventeen years.

That’s how long Gwen had been my entire world.

Her parents—my son David and his wife Carla—died in a car accident when Gwen was only eight years old. One moment she had a full family, and the next it was just the two of us trying to figure out how to survive the silence left behind.

That first month was the hardest.

Every night she cried herself to sleep. I would sit on the edge of her bed holding her hand until her breathing slowed and the tears stopped. My knees hurt so badly climbing the stairs each night that I sometimes had to pause halfway, but I never told her that.

She had already lost enough.

About six weeks after the accident, she walked into the kitchen one morning while I was making toast. Her hair was still messy from sleep, and she looked so small standing there.

“Don’t worry, Grandma,” she said quietly. “We’ll figure everything out together.”