Sheldon walks through the front door of Memaw's house. He feels like he is walking into one of Amy's old movies. Everything turns grainy and gray and he can hear a tinkling tune like a music box playing in the distance. The tune seems familiar but he cannot place it as he heads towards the sound. Everything in the house seems distorted somehow, in the right place but still somehow off. It is giving him a creepy feeling as he walks through the halls. The pictures on the walls are wrong he realizes, the settings are the same but the people in them are much older than when the original picture was taken. It is as if the likenesses had aged as time moved on.
He comes to the picture of his Pop that had always hung next to the lamp by his office and is horrified to see that he is just bones in a suit. Sheldon screams and starts running down the hall desperately trying to get to the source of the music. He reaches the room at the end, what had once been the playroom he and his sister used when they visited. He opens the door and sees Memaw in her rocking chair. She is holding a snow globe and inside is a little bride and groom. She holds out the snow globe to him, he takes it and peers inside. With horror he realizes that it is he and Amy and they are desperately knocking against the glass trying to get out. Sheldon screams again, drops the globe and watches as it shatters.
"Sheldon." Memaw says
"No Memaw! Let us out!" me mumbles.
"Sheldon wake up." He hears Amy's voice, husky with concern "You are okay, I am right here." She says as she wraps her arms around his middle.
"Amy, I had such a bad dream." he tells her holding her close like he used to do with his teddy bear when he was little and would get a nightmare. He inhales deeply, the scent of her hair calming him down.
"It is only to be expected, dreams are the minds way of sorting out the problems and worries that are concerning you. Seeing what a stressful day you had yesterday and the one that awaits you today it is no wonder your brain is overloaded. Would you like to talk about it? I will understand if you do not want to, but it might help."
"It was just so vivid and real." He begins telling her about the dream in its entirety. Amy listens with rapt attention saying nothing until he has reached the end.
"Sheldon, I know you think that analyzing dreams is mumbo jumbo but I think this one can be easily interpreted."
"Oh really, you find my mind so easy to pick apart?" he asks bemused.
"No not at all, your mind is a beautiful labyrinth that I expect I will never fully understand. Yet in this one instance I think I can offer some insights." Amy tells him looking up at his face. He is gazing back down at her with what she could on describe reverence.
"Alright my little brain monkey, pick away." He tells her.
"Well the walking into your grandmother's house and it turning into black in white is simple enough. You are back in your child hood home, so in many ways it is like traveling into the past. The pictures aging on the walls, is your feeling that while everything remains the same everything is completely different. You are still squabbling with you siblings but the subject matter has changed. Pop as bones on the wall is your fear of death, and you trying to process the death of your grandmother. Us trapped in the snow globe is a manifestation of your anxiety of our new engagement. Perhaps you feel trapped here in your childhood home, and you are anxious about the reaction others will have when you make the announcement. Perhaps even worried that some may say you are only doing it in a fulfillment of your Memaw's last wish, which is why she is holding the snow globe. "Amy tells him
Sheldon considers her words "You are right. I have been worried about breaking the news of our engagement." He says finally.
"I would understand if you did not want to tell anyone yet. Maybe wait until we are back home and your Memaw's death is not so fresh in everyone's minds." Amy tells him, though if it were up to her she would tell everyone. It has taken all her strength to refrain from changing her Facebook relationship status from 'in a relationship' to 'engaged'.
"I have thought about that, also I would not want to be accused of trying to overshadow an event like this. But then on the other hand, I have also thought about how the news might lift my mother's spirits a little." He sighs his hand nervously tapping her lower back.
"I don't think anyone would accuse you of purposely overshadowing your grandmother's funeral." Amy tells him.
"You would be surprised. I was the youngest person ever to receive The Stephenson Award, and the day I was to be presented with the award turned out to be was the same day as my sisters dance recital. To this day she has not forgiven me for it."
"Sheldon this is completely different situation, I am sure she would take this news much better. However if you wish maybe we should just tell a few people, perhaps just your mother, Leonard and Penny."
"If I tell my Mother she will tell Missy and if you tell Penny she will tell everyone. It will go on twitter and Facebook before it we even stop speaking. The sight of you with that ring will not go unnoticed however." Sheldon says picking up her hand and examining it, rolling the ring around on her finger.
"Do you want me to take it off?" Amy asks, even though this is the last thing she wants to do, if it were up her the ring would never leave her finger ever again.
"No, keep it on. What I was suggesting is that maybe we let everyone see you with the ring and let them infer what they will." He tells her looking into her eyes.
"So, you are suggesting that we forgo an official announcement for now, but if someone were to inquire as to why I am wearing the ring we would not deny it?" Amy asks.
"Yes. Is that agreeable to you?" he asks.
"I think it is the perfect solution to our little conundrum. Now let's try and get back to sleep, its only three in the morning." She says moving to give him a soft kiss on the cheek but he moves his face and she catches his lips. Unsure whether he moved to dodge the kiss or meet her lips she tries to break away. The hand that had been tapping on her back now flattens and pulls her closer to him answering her unspoken question.
Amy's mind is going a million miles an hour on one hand she wants nothing more than to make love to him again. It amazes her how just one touch from his lips can set her on fire, but she also realizes that he is vulnerable right now. He has just had a bad nightmare, he is laying his grandmother to rest tomorrow and his emotions are confused. Then she feels his hand slide up the back of her nightgown coming to rest on her backside and give it a gentle squeeze fanning the flames of the fire building within her and reminding her off the time he threw her over his knees smacked her.. This is my fiancé she thinks, and she comes to the sudden realization that she can do all the things with him now that she only dreamed of doing before.
She starts by kissing his neck trailing kisses up till she reaches his jawline where she nips her way back to his mouth. She kisses him deeply exploring his mouth with her own. Then she rolls him gently onto his back and climbs on top of him. Amy starts to unbutton his pajama top frustrated to find the extra layer of white t-shirt underneath.
"Do you always wear two layers?" She asks impatiently as she tugs the shirt over his head.
"Yes, but so do you." He says a little breathlessly, utterly enthralled by the vixen before him.
"Not always." Amy says pulling off her nightgown now only clad in her panties. Sheldon's hands move to cup her exposed breasts. Amy grinds her hips against him and feels him pressed against her, straining against his pajamas.
"I like this." He says pulling her hips down against him and trusting upwards. "It reminds me of how I used to release my, ahem tensions, before I perfected the art of koh-lin-ar." He tells her sitting up suddenly so they are face to face.
"Interesting, tell me more." She whispers kissing his neck again.
"Well, when I first started developing as an adolescent it was a very confusing time for me. I started having urges and feelings I did not understand, I would be working on a calculus problem and things for lack of a better word would 'pop up'." He tells her between kisses murmuring against her mouth. Sheldon's habit of talking whilst his mouth was pressed against hers had at first annoyed her until the day she asked him why he could not stop talking long enough to kiss her. His reply that actually it was the other way around that he did not want to stop kissing her long enough to talk had pacified her bruised ego and she had grown to find it endearing.
"Oh that must have been embarrassing at school."
" Exactly, sometimes it would go away on its own, but sometimes it would not and I would do what we are doing now, only against my pillow. "
"I was always under the impression that you had never done any 'tension reliving'." Amy says surprised
"Well it is not exactly a subject that you bring up in polite company." He says pausing and looking at her seriously as she smiles at him.
"No, I guess you are right about that." She tells him pushing him gently back down onto the pillows. Amy runs her hands down his chest, letting her fingers run through the smattering of chest hair and the light trail of hair that leads to the top of his pajama pants. She hears his breathing hitch and she looks down at him to see him staring up at as if she were a goddess. And in this moment Amy does feel like a goddess, on top of him, possessing him completely.
"Do you trust me?" She asks sliding off him and tugging off his pajamas.
"Implicitly." He says his breath catching as Amy slides further down his body coming to rest between his legs and taking him into her hands
"Amy, you don't have to… Oh my!" He gasps as she takes him into her mouth, she tests the length, then teases the tip. "Oh god, you are a vixen!" He gasps as she continues her ministrations. "Why'd you stop?" He says bereft when she releases him and stands up.
"We are going to need this." She says retrieving a condom from the night stand and going back to him. Amy rolls it on him and then removes her panties, lowers herself onto him and begins to rock gently. Sheldon lets her move at her own rhythm and runs his hands up and down her body pausing only to caress her breasts then settling on her behind. Amy is surprised that Sheldon is letting her take so much control, maybe he likes to be controlled in the bedroom she thinks just before he grabs her by her hips and flips her over. Their bodies still connected as he grabs her leg and hitches it around his waist.
"I think I have let you have enough fun." He tells her his eyes smiling but his face completely serious.
"Oh, I was under the impression that we both were in on the fun." She tells him matching his serious expression with one of her own.
"Yes, but I was letting you have the lions share. Now it is my turn to play." He tells her giving her a crooked little smile that makes her tremble.
"Well unlike you, I play very well with others." She says winking at him and giggling.
"Is that so?" he bends down to kiss her, pushing deeper into her as he does and she cries out at the sensation. "Shh" he hushes her whispering into her ear. "We don't want to wake the house." But then he begins an assault on her body that makes it nearly impossible not to cry out. It seems like his hands and mouth are everywhere as he continues to explore every inch of her. She is amazed but not displeased at how quickly has learned the rhythms of her body. Each movement hitting her in the exact right spot until she has to throw a pillow over her face to keep from screaming as she reaches her climax. Sheldon finds his release at the same time and flops off her panting into his pillow.
"You were right that was fun." Amy tells him rolling over and snuggling into her pillow suddenly very sleepy. He wraps his arm around her and soon they are both fast asleep.
...
"Where is that boy?" Mary asks annoyed, "It is nearly 9:30 and Sheldon has not emerged from his bedroom yet."
"That's odd, at home he wakes up at the ass crack of dawn." Penny remarks taking a sip of her coffee, caffeinated thanks to the can Amy bought at the store yesterday.
"Well he better get up and in here soon! We have a whole mess of things to do before the funeral! In all my years knowing Shelly I have never known him to sleep in so late when there are things to do. Usually it is him nagging me to get up." Missy says.
"I have to admit it is odd, the only time he sleeps in at home is if he is sick otherwise he wakes up at 7:30 every day." Leonard remarks.
"Aww, hell I'll go check on him." George says getting up
"Wait, I mean he has got Amy in there with him." Penny says pointedly.
"So, that don't mean nothing." He tells her already striding down the hall and throwing the door to Sheldon's room wide open. "Rise and…" the hear George begin before they hear Amy scream and Sheldon shout
"Dear Lord! Shut the door!" George shuts the door hastily and hurries back to the kitchen red faced.
"They are up." he says grabbing his coffee and walking out of the kitchen.
"Where are you going?" Mary asks.
"To go burn my eyeballs out." He calls over his shoulder.
...
Amy stands in the shower and laughs to herself. What George had seen was a little embarrassing but mostly she felt like he had gotten what he deserved for barging in on them. She had woken up feeling happy, languid, and a little sore with her arm wrapped around a still nude Sheldon. Amy had laid there quietly for a moment studying his back memorizing the musculature and ridges. Suddenly she had been overcome with the *urge to kiss the top of his spine, the back of his neck just where his hair hit. As soon as she had done this he had flipped over to face her looking incredibly beautiful with his tousled hair and sleepy eyes.
"Just what do you think you are doing." .
"Nothing." Amy says casually placing her hands on his chest.
"Hmmm…it didn't feel like nothing. It seems to me that last night's amorous activities were not enough to satisfy you." The expression on his face unreadable and she cannot tell if he is teasing her or not.
"It was just a little kiss." she says shyly.
"Well, that may be so, but if last night's activities were not enough to satiate you I think I can oblige." He tells her just before grabbing her by the waist and flipping over so he is flat on his back with her straddling him.
"I thought you did not like it when I have all the fun?" Amy asks laughing.
"I never said I didn't like it." he said reaching up to touch her breasts and that is where George burst through the door and Amy jumped off of him. Now let George think of Sheldon as a sexless robot she thinks smugly.
….
"Good Morning." Sheldon says in a sing song voice as he sits down at the breakfast table and his mother gives him a look. "Oh right funeral today." He says catching her expression and changes it to a somber "Good Morning."
"No. It's ok Memaw would want us to celebrate her life and be able to move on and be happy." She tells him as she hands him a plate of food. He picks up the fork and begins to eat with gusto.
"You hungry darling?" Mary asks cautiously.
"Famished" He replies picking up a piece of toast and biting into it.
"All that physical activity works up an appetite." Leonard says sniggering into his coffee. Sheldon looks up at him with a shocked expression on his face.
"I have no idea what you are talking about." Sheldon says giving him a hard look.
"Sure you don't." he says giving him an exaggerated wink.
"Well, if you will excuse me I am going to see if the shower is free." he says standing up, putting his plate in the sink and storming off down the hall.
"Leonard, don't tease him so much." Penny says.
"Excuse me, I have been berated by that guy for seven years about my sex life, it is his just desserts to get teased a little" Leonard tells her.
"Yeah but you can handle it. He might dust off his old death ray and see if he can get it to work." Penny says.
….
An hour later everyone is assembled in the living room wearing black and looking somber.
"Alright, well Missy, Sheldon, George and I better shove off and get to the church and help set things up. Are you sure ya'll don't mind setting things up here and then heading to the church to hand out the programs."
"Not at all Mary." Amy tells her.
"We are more than happy to help Mrs. Cooper." Leonard tells her.
"As long as we get to drive the mustang there I am fine." Penny tells her.
"Well don't get to attached to that car, we are selling it on Monday." Mary tells her as they head out the door.
….
"It doesn't even look like her." Sheldon says gazing down at his grandmother one last time.
"Well sugar, it isn't really her, this is just her shell, she is really…"
"Mother if you don't mind I would like to skip over all the 'her soul is in heaven' talk. I know it brings comfort to you, but to me it rings hollow. I am not trying to be disrespectful, truly I am not. "
"You are hurting, darling and so am I." she tells him wrapping her arm around him and resting her head on his shoulder. To her surprise and delight he wraps his arm around her and gives her a kiss on the top of her head.
"I am going to miss her." He says choking up.
"I know, me too, me too. Sheldon honey, things come in a circle though, I am sure even you, with all your fancy schooling can see that. Memaw is gone and that is mighty sad, but I think you have some happy news that you have been holding back." Mary says looking up at him.
"Did you happen to see Amy's right hand before we left the house?" he asks
"I did."
"And from that can you infer what my news might be?"
"I can. And let me tell you honey, I know that you may be afraid to let everyone know given the situation at hand but let me say, I think nothing would have pleased Memaw more than to know you were happy. That you had someone to love you and take care of you when she was gone."
….
Amy finds she pew where Sheldon is sitting and slides in next to him. For the past thirty minutes she and Penny have been handing our programs and fielding questions about their relationship to the family. They encountered a dozen or so encounters like this:
"Are you two of Stumpy's girls?"
"No, I am Amy, Sheldon's girlfriend and this Penny his friend and neighbor."
"Oh no honey, Shelly, he don't go in for girls like that."
Until eventually Amy and Penny just started agreeing that yes they were Stumpy's girls.
Amy grabs his hand and gives it a squeeze, his hand is clammy and he looks very nervous.
"You are on after the choir sings, are you going to be okay? The crowd is bigger than I expected it to be." Amy whispers to him and he nods weakly.
"What can I say, she was a popular woman." He swallows deeply. The choir finishes and the preacher announces that her grandson Dr. Sheldon Cooper has a few words he would like to say on her behalf. Sheldon releases Amy's hand, walks up to the pulpit and looks nervously around at the crowd before beginning.
"When I started writing this eulogy I wanted to start out with a quote by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross that says "It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are."
Then I pictured Mother saying "Now Shelly don't you go spouting off them fancy words at your grandmother's funeral. It makes other people feel bad when they can't understand what you are saying"
Then I thought that I would use a quote by the great philosopher Soren Kierkegaard "Life can be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards." Then again I heard my sister's voice saying "Now Shelly, just because you got a degree in philosophy does not mean you can go shoving it down everyone's throats all the time."
When I was a small child I was what my father described as a pain in the ass, my sister called me a know it all but my Memaw, she preferred the term precocious. When you are a precocious child you are often told to "hush up", or told "don't ask me that how would I know?" But Memaw never treated me like that. We used to sit in her rocking chair and I could ask her all the questions I wanted. She would answer them all to the best to her abilities and the ones she couldn't answer we would look up in her ancient set of Encyclopedias.
It was not long though before I learned to read and I would read her set of Encyclopedias from cover to cover. My knowledge had surpassed hers by the time I turned six but that does not mean I did not still turn to her for wisdom. Memaw was full of wisdom like "Honey, don't slaughter the pig if no one asked for bacon." I looked to her for give advice all the time. In fact one of the greatest pieces of advice I have received came from her fairly recently.
I was distraught by a lot of changes that had lately come into my life and I was complaining to Memaw about some of them in a letter. In her reply she told me a story, that sometimes in her garden this weed would appear. No matter what she did to dispose of it, it would just keep reappearing like its roots were just too strong to destroy. One summer evening she was out in her garden and realized that that weed had grown a beautiful flower. It turns out it was not a weed but an evening primrose a useful and attractive plant. Then she wrote "Now Moonpie, quit plucking at them weeds and see what happens when you let that flower grow."
I took that to mean stop trying to control the actions of those around me. Stop trying to thwart others efforts to get close to me and see what happens when I let things go naturally, which went against every bone in body. Yet I did listen to her and stopped plucking at the proverbial weeds in my life.
In the last letter I wrote to her just two weeks before she died I let her know how profoundly that piece of advice had affected me. How since I had stopped plucking at the weeds I had never been happier.
I wish she could have seen her advice to me in action, I wish I could have seen her one more time. I don't know what awaits us in the beyond, but I hope that somewhere in a different dimension she knows what an affect she had on all our lives." Sheldon says stepping down from the pulpit.
"That was lovely." Amy tells him.
"That was one of the hardest things I have ever done." He tells her grabbing her hand again.
Just a few notes
Thank you to Shamy4eva for helping me with this chapter
I Know I said this was the last chapter last tie but I lied there is still one more to go.
The * is the give credit to Lisa Loeb for writing that line for me. I was listening to her on a loop and realized that I had written one of the lines in and I liked it so much I will just give her credit. It is in the song Sandalwood.
Thank you for all the reviews! Don't be shy tell me what you think, how do you see this ending? What would you like to see happen?