that snowy night

My mother's hip broke while she was at church one day right before Christmas.  The nurse from her home away from home had taken her and Lauren was en route to meet her.  She didn't fall and break it....just a snap and she fell.  Osteoporosis.  She was rushed to the local ER and admitted.  I'm a conservative kind of gal when it comes to treatment so I asked the surgeon if pinning was an option and he said yes.  About a month later the pin smooth fell out of that chalky bone and caused one heck of a big pain.  I hauled her in a wheelchair into and out of the doc's office for surgery #2.  It lasted five hours but she recovered quickly and was on the mend.  Then she had this strange belly pain which a CT confirmed was a ruptured diverticulum.  In spite of multiple heavy duty antibiotics, her white count continued to climb.  The turning point was when my friend Jimbo said she would not survive another surgery.  And he told her that like good doctors will.  Hospice was called in and Tommy headed out from Virginia.  Lauren was working the graveyard shift at the place where Mama had stayed and during the night before her death it snowed.  Like big time.  BG got there and snoozed on the couch by her all day.  Me and Bubba worked and Tommy arrived late in the day.  Mom was peaceful and not in pain so he went out to eat and then came back to lay on the same couch where Lauren had been.  Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, he called me and frantically told me she had died.  As he told it, he was a bit awake and saw her point up and then cease to breathe.  

She was still warm when I got there, Tommy was a hot mess and Millette was with us.  She gently took Mom's necklace off that held their wedding rings and fastened it onto me.  She was buried on a freezing day in January on a slope that was hard to navigate.  One of the pall bearers had told us that he couldn't be there because he would be out of town.  He wasn't listed as one.  Yet in the end, he and his wife showed and he helped carry the casket up that muddy slope.  

That was almost six years ago and I remember it like it was last week.  I am who I am because of her and Daddy, but more like him.  She was a socialite and I was not.  So be it.  She loved me like chicken ^j^