Three families are remembering daughters and sisters killed one year ago in a shooting that left a fourth woman wounded and haunted by the loss of her friends.
One family will gather to recall the good times, while another struggles not to dwell on the cruel coincidence of a young woman killed on her father's birthday.
Sharrice Perkins, Kristen Lartey, and Genevieve Phillip, all 22, died after being shot in a parked car after attending the Dominican Festival in Franklin Park last Aug. 12.
Angela Francis, mother of Sharrice Perkins, said 10 to 15 family members and close friends of her daughter's would gather Monday night in her memory.
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"We're going out to dinner, and we're just going to all be together," she said Sunday. "We probably will cry, but that's not our goal. Our goal is to relive the happy memories."
Kristen Lartey's family gathered Saturday at her grave in Hyde Park's Oak Lawn Cemetery, beside that of her mother, Sonja Lartey, lost to breast cancer in 2010.
Following a service in his daughter's memory at Family Life Fellowship Church on Sunday, the Rev. G. Agabus Lartey maintained his composure as he recalled the deeply emotional moment.
"Standing by the grave and seeing Kristen's name on it, and her mom buried next to her," he said, "to see my loved ones are not with me, and Kristen so young and her life not yet fulfilled — that was overwhelming."
Family, friends, and parishioners gathered after the service to celebrate the birthday of Agabus Lartey, born in Ghana on the day that his daughter would die 55 years later.
"While celebrating Kristen's life, we should also celebrate his," said Michael Bishop, his brother-in-law. "We still have to give thanks to God."
No one answered the doorbell Sunday afternoon at the home of Genevieve Phillip's family.
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Sergeant Detective Richard Daley, of the Boston Police Department, said Saturday that the survivor of the shootings, whom police have not identified out of concern for her safety, is "nervous, traumatic, and going through a lot of emotional issues."
With the first anniversary of the shootings approaching, police released photos Friday of crowds at the Dominican Festival and a white sport utility vehicle, believed to be a newer model Chevrolet Captiva or Saturn Vue, seen near Harlem Street in Dorchester, where the women were shot.
On Saturday, Daley, who is leading the shooting investigation, appealed for festival attendees to contact police.
"Anything they saw may be innocent and innocuous to them, but it could be helpful to our investigation," Daley said.
He said the shootings were not random and it's possible they were related to an earlier crime. "We're exploring several avenues, and that is one," he said.
Francis, mother of Sharrice Perkins, said on Sunday she is grateful for the renewed effort to find witnesses.
"We actually do appreciate it, because I'm thinking maybe . . . there could be people that were at the cookout that saw something that might not have even thought about it a year ago," she said.
She and her son, Chris Perkins, 22, said, though, that the anniversary and the extra attention have made their grief more raw.
"I feel like I'm reliving it," Francis said as she stood outside their Harlem Street home, just steps from the shooting scene. "The emotions have come back. I feel like I did a year ago."
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"It seemed like a long year," Chris Perkins said, "until we're looking back, and it's almost like it happened yesterday . . . like it's the same summer."
Sharrice Perkins was remembered Sunday at Morning Star Baptist Church in Mattapan, where her funeral was held and where the Rev. Gary Adams, an uncle by marriage, is a minister.
Adams said the sense of loss is something that never goes away.
"As the anniversary approaches . . . I am reminded that for families who deal with these types of homicides that it is never forgotten," he said. "It is a matter of living effectively with the memory and prayerfully being a light, a force against darkness."
At Family Life Fellowship, the sermon Rev. Lartey delivered in his daughter's memory "was about living in conformity with the values of God . . . for to know God is to be equipped and strengthened when you have no control over what happens in life," he said.
"But I wouldn't be human if I told you it's been easy," he added. "I've cried a lot. Sometimes I even lose my voice, and then I remember where the pain is coming from."
Close to 20 family members attended the service. Many churchgoers wore mementos of Kristen Lartey's funeral — plastic bracelets bearing her name, followed by the words of her final Facebook status: "In the world, not of it."
"It's a biblical saying," said Lisa Brathwaite, 27, a cousin of Kristen Lartey. "It means that you are in the world, but you are a spiritual being — a creature of heaven here for now in the flesh."
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Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeremycfox. Alyssa A. Botelho can be reached at alyssa.botelho@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @AlyssaABotelho.