Endings

The past few weeks have been difficult.  On March 13th my mother entered into hospice care.  She had lived with my sister Liz for the past 2 years and was slowly fading away.  She passed on March 23, 2016.  Mike and I started preparing that day to leave Texas and pre-packed all of our belongings, except for daily clothes by the 20th. (There was also the final trip to Goodwill for all the things we discovered we no longer needed to carry with us!)  So when the call came, it took us just the final day to load everything into our truck and head north.

Of course any trip with the two of us is not without some drama.  The morning of March 24th we stopped in Livingston to pick up accumulated mail and found a jury summons for Mike.  He was supposed to have reported on March 21st!  I was sure that he had a "failure to report" subpoena sworn out against him and would be arrested at any minute, being the hardened criminal he is.  Needless to say we went to the courthouse right away to correct this error.  And happily Livingston is used to dealing with Escapees like us, who travel full time.  The clerk just said "OK, when do you want to serve?"  So we will be back in Texas on September 26th for Mike to serve jury duty.  And I cancelled the last 2 weeks of our Colorado trip.

The trip to West Virginia was good as the roads were clear but the orange barrels are EVERYWHERE!!!  I know they are the state flower of PA, but seriously?????  Anyway, with all the rain in Arkansas, it looked like the whole state is just one huge swamp.  There was water standing on both sides of the roads in fields.  I don't think it is because AR is growing all of the world's rice, it just looked like it.

So we finally got to WV and had a very nice funeral for mother.  Liz's son-in-law Nelson officiated at the ceremony.  As with all funerals, we saw many friends and family and, for me, quite a few unknown people who knew mother over the years and came to pay their respects.  She is now laid to rest beside Daddy and Bruce.

Edith's Shinnston High School Senior Picture

L to R:  me, Liz, mother, Becky