When Mother died, it was a tragic year for all of us. We had known that she was destined to die in the early weeks of January, but she departed this world in the middle of December, three days before Christmas time. The gloom hung in the wintry day, when the snow fell, and my mother died.
It wasn’t unusual for a plague to catch on that quick, and take someone’s life. Mother just didn’t know she had it until it was too late. Her heart stopped beating, and Charles had to run into our neighbor’s house, screaming, “I need Hank, the doctor! I need Hank, the doctor!”
The door opened and my poor frightened brother scrambled in to find Mr. Hank Leverman, the neighborhood doctor.
“What is it, my dear child?” he questioned Charles as he pushed him out of the freezing weather of December 22, 1856.
“It’s my mum! Hurry! She is in dire need of a doctor! Her pulse is gone, sir!” Charles cried out into the warm house.
Mr. Hank Leverman’s face suddenly turned serious and pale. “Where is she?” he asked.
“No!” another voice cried in another room in the house, “you can’t leave me!”
“Yes, your right…” Mr. Leverman said quietly.
“Who is in there?” my brother asked.
“Mrs. Filburnging. She has lost her eyesight this morning…I can’t leave her, and yet I must. Your mother must get to over to this house right away! Charles! Young man, will you bring your mother over to my house?”
Charles nodded, out of breath. He knew that every second counted.
“Then go, young man, and return with haste!”
But it was already too late. When Charles came back, he saw that Father and I were crying into each other’s shoulders, not daring to look at what was just below us. Charles gasped as he saw his dead mother, lying on the floor. All of the blood from her usual cheery face was gone, and she was as pale as ice.
New York in 1856 was a terribly cold year from start to finish. Many people had caught the flu and died, suffering long hours of torturous medicine down their throat, but nothing could stop the plague from finishing off whatever it started.
It was hard to accept the fact that Mother was gone. When Mr. Leverman asked about the funeral date, it surprised father so much that he ran and hid under his blankets, back at home.
Funeral. What a terrible word, and yet, it had been the most popular word that year. There was always a funeral to go to. There was always someone who had died. But Mother? My Mother’s funeral? Why would someone ask a silly question like that?
Funeral. It came as a shock. Funeral. We had to prepare for it.
The Winding River Cemetery graciously offered a spot for Mother to be put down to rest. We had been driving our stagecoach around the country part of New York, looking for a proper cemetery for Mother. Yet, it seemed as if every cemetery was full. Except for Winding River.
The Winding River passed through the cemetery just on the southeast side of it. The cemetery itself was a perfect square, congruent on each side. Graves and tombstones littered the area, and we knew that this is where Mother would have wanted to be layed to rest.
The date. What day would we do it? We sat down with the morgue owner and we settled with a Sunday morning, January 4, 1857.
Snow fell lightly on that cold, January morning. I wiped a frozen tear off of my face and continued to stare at the lowering casket. I felt Father put his hand around my shoulder, and I leaned into him, hugging him. Mother’s body slowly went deeper, and deeper into the earth. There was something about saying good-bye that just didn’t make sense. How could they say good-bye to Mother, when she had been there all of those years, feeding her two sons and husband. Where was she now? Was she in Heaven, where everyone claimed she was?
As she went lower and lower, I whispered to Father, “Father, is Mother in Heaven?”
He didn’t answer for a long time. At last, when the casket was on the ground, six feet below our feet, he answered, “Yes, Danny, she is.”
I used to love the sound of my feet crunching on the soft, newly fallen snow. But not today. Today I loathed every sound that my shoes made on the soft snow. The whiteness of it made me even angrier, and I kicked the snow, hoping that it would all go away. But it didn’t.
I looked behind me and saw Charles and Father talking about something. I didn’t care. There was nothing I cared about anymore. I kicked some more snow. I even grew angry at a cross that had a woman’s face on it, and I ran over to it, and kicked it as hard as I could. A chunk of it flew off, and landing a few inches away.
“Good,” I thought to myself. I was glad that I had broken it. It didn’t deserve to remain intact.
I looked around for another target, and saw another cross. I stomped over to it, sending snow flying through the air. I raised my foot to kick it, when I saw something.
Snow was on the cross of the T that the cross made, and I wiped it off. Had I been seeing things? It couldn’t have said what I thought it did.
I wiped the other arm of the cross off and brushed the letters that were engraved on the front of the cross:
DANNY CHASE
OCTOBER 3, 1840- JANUARY 5,1857
“What?” I asked myself. What did this mean? Was there another Danny Chase? But, there couldn’t be, because it said that this Danny Chase was born on October 3, 1840, and that was my birthday. What was going on?
There was one other thing that caught me by surprise. It was the death date. January 5, 1857. That was one day from today.
Was someone trying to pull a prank on me? I knew kids from the town that would do something like this, but would they really go this far?
“Father! Come, quick!” I yelled to my father, who was walking back to our stagecoach. Father turned his head and then he pointed to the horses and the carriage. I shook my head.
“Father! There is something I need to show you!” I yelled.
My father continued to walk away. I grunted and ran over to the stagecoach, and saw that the horses looked very dreary and tired, just like I was. I also noticed that I was out of breath.
“F-father! Please! There is something you need to see!” I cried again, but he shook his head and stepped into the carriage. I looked back over to the grave that had my name on it. Snow covered it once again.
I sighed and stepped into the carriage, just behind Charles.
Written very well, besides some of the punctuation. 
One issue I had was that I didn't really know the MC's name. When you first mentioned his name on the cross, I didn't feel for him until later when I figured it out. I would have, like, his father say, "It's alright, Danny" or something. Maybe Charlie could say, "I'm gonna fetch Dr. Hank, Danny." There's different ways to subtly include the MC's name so the reader doesn't forget it or doesn't know it at all. It will make the ending more effective.
