It is Thanksgiving 1953. Our little country house is brimming with activity. I feel safe. My Aunt Jessie has been living with us. She has been taking care of me and my three oldest siblings. Mom is coming home from the hospital today. Just for the day they say. The Salvation Army lent Daddy a wheel chair. The ambulance arrives. I see her being lifted out and into the chair. Little did I know, that chair with the wheels would be with her for #life. I wasn't sure it was her. Polio had taken it's toll. Her suffering was obvious even to me as a very young child. By late afternoon I felt a sense of belonging to her again. Everything had changed yet everything seemed alright again. My Dad was 7 years older then my Mom. They had met when his older brother married her older sister. Walter walked with a limp. He remembers a time in his childhood of much pain and fever, but no one ever had an explanation of what happened to this little boy. Hell, they hardly saw a Doctor for anything. His father died when he was 4. His mother who was left with 6 kids chose boyfriends over her children. From what I understand they brought themselves up. He worked with Circuses for many years traveling and setting up tents. They started seeing each other. He was so handsome, She was so inocent. When he asked her to Marry him he had seen a Doctor beforehand and been told he may end up crippled at some point in his #life. She married him with the idea that if this happend they would still have the family they prayed for and a little farm in the country. He told her he may not be able to dance,she said it would be fine. Now it was her that could not dance.may not

I hear the rumbling of a distant train. I am not allowed to go near this area of the forest. I am staying with my aunt. I am too small to stay home . My older sisters have school everyday and must live without Mom for awhile. Still so very young, I believe living without Mom will be permanent. She is dead I think. I remember when grandma died. The four of us little girls, upstairs in our little bedroom. We were kneeling on the floor around the heat register, looking down at grandma. She lay in her hospital bed dying of cancer. I watch. I hear the voices of my aunt my Mom and my Dad. Only later I would understand what was going on. My grandma called to my Dad. She asked if he had left for work knowing it was time. My aunt said he was still there. Gather, she said, I am leaving now. My Dad tried to give her a shot of morphine, she refused. She said goodbye, then Dwight, come get me and took her last breath. Grandpa Dwight had passed a month earlier.

Ann I hear voices, then an ambulance. I am very small. It is the middle of the night. I peek out through the crack as I move close to the bedroom door. My father and sister Sandy, have my mother. She is sitting on a pillow at the top of the stairway . She stopped walking that morning. I see them pull her down the staircase one step at a time. I am 4 years of age.